Advisory Board

The SXSW ScreenBurn Advisory Board is a team of highly qualified individuals who lend their credibility and innovations to help us develop greater social foresight for our conference’s development. They receive status reports on our activities, and respond with advice as to how we can best serve our audience and the industry.

Wagner James Au
nwn.blogs.com
James publishes the virtual world blog New World Notes (nwn.blogs.com), launched during his stint as an “embedded journalist” with Linden Lab, documented in his HarperCollins book *The Making of Second Life*. He was recently a writer/designer for next-gen social game company ohai and a contributing editor with GigaOM, and is currently a virtual worlds/goods analyst for Social Times.

Brandon Boyer
www.offworld.com
www.brandonnn.com
Brandon's wild, pure, simple life has seen him at various times acting as artist, programmer, and indie record label head, as well as writer, columnist and editor for web and print publications like Edge magazine and Gamasutra.com. He has also served numerous times as a judge for Think Services' Independent Games Festival, and as both an advisory board member and speaker at the Austin Game Developers Conference's inaugural Indie Games Summit. Brandon currently oversees Offworld.com, an offshoot of Boing Boing, covering the intersection of the best in independent, mainstream, and iPhone gaming, and the best in art, music and related videogame culture.

Corey Bridges
www.multiverse.net
www.mv-places.com
Responsible for business development and strategic planning at Multiverse, Corey is helping build the world's leading network of interactive entertainment, which includes casual games, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), and 3D virtual worlds. Over the past year, Corey has overseen development of two ground-breaking projects for the casual game market, Battle: Realms at War, the world's most extensive web-based, massively multiplayer online game; and WarBase, a casual game that brings actual excitement to Facebook. He has also worked with Coca-Cola and McDonald's on worldwide interactive promotions around James Cameron's movie Avatar. Since the company's beginning, Corey has also helped pioneer the concept of virtual worlds as a new medium that will support a range of applications, including entertainment, education, business collaboration, research, and simulation. Corey brings experience from some of the most influential companies in the high-tech and entertainment industries, including Netscape, Netflix, Zone Labs, Borland, and The Discovery Channel. In 2003, he was invited to contribute to a U.S. Homeland Security task force on Cyber Security. He also has written, directed, and produced various independent films, commercials, and TV specials. An award-winning writer, he has also collaborated with well-known technology expert John Dvorak on multiple books. Corey is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.

Drew Davidson
waxebb.com
Drew Davidson is a professor, producer and player of interactive media. His background spans academic, industry and professional worlds and he is interested in stories across texts, comics, games and other media. He is the Director of the Entertainment Technology Center – Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University and the Editor of ETC Press. http://waxebb.com/

Rodney Gibbs
www.ricochetlabs.com
Rodney is CEO and co-founder of Ricochet Labs, developer of the location-based smartphone quiz app QRANK. Rodney previously founded and sold Fizz Factor, and he serves on the boards of the Austin Film Society, KUT, and the International Game Developers Association.

Sean Kauppinen
www.ide-agency.com
Sean Kauppinen is the founder and CEO of the International Digital Entertainment Agency. He has more than 15 years of business management, strategic communications and business development expertise in the digital entertainment industry and his ability to bring companies together and provide strategic guidance has led to business growth for industry giants as well as start-ups. During this time Kauppinen has launched more than 450 titles on all major gaming platforms, ranging from big budget blockbusters to value games. He has consulted governments on creating and growing their digital entertainment industries and has served in senior management roles with start-ups and later stage companies. Kauppinen has worked with hundreds of companies and has had internal roles with Smite Entertainment, Frogster America, Sony Online Entertainment, Ubi Soft, bleem!, and 3dfx.

Kauppinen currently holds advisory board positions with the GDC Europe and multiple early stage companies. He is a former board member of Games Convention Developers Conference and the GC Asia Conference.

Joe Kreiner
www.terminalreality.com
Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Terminal Reality, is a games industry force. Previously an evangelist for 3D graphics, CPU, and peripheral technologies in gaming – he’s now focused on licensing for the Infernal Game Engine. Past companies include Texas Instruments/3Dlabs, Cyrix, STMicroelectronics/PowerVR and Logitech. In recognition of his contributions to the games industry, Joe has special thanks credits in more than thirty titles spread over the last ten years. Joe is the founder of the Dallas chapter of the IGDA(International Game Developers Association), running it for more than five years before turning it over to a dedicated group of volunteers. Joe holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Penn State University.

Harvey Smith
twitter.com/harvey1966
www.arkane-studios.com
Harvey Smith is a video game designer and writer who has been making games professionally since 1993. Currently, he is Co-Creative Director at Arkane Studios, on an unannounced project. In 2009, he released the iPhone game KarmaStar. From 2004 to 2007, he served as Creative Director for Midway Studios-Austin, managing the design department, starting three projects and shipping Blacksite during that time. He worked at Ion Storm’s Austin office from 1998 to 2004, acting as Project Director of Deus Ex: Invisible War and Lead Designer on the award-winning Deus Ex, winning the 2000 BAFTA and many other awards. Prior to Ion Storm, he worked at Multitude, an Internet startup in San Mateo, CA. There he was Lead Designer of FireTeam, an innovative tactical squad game that was one of the earliest video games to feature voice-communications between players. Smith started his career at the pivotal game company Origin Systems, working there for three years. In 2005, he won the Game Design Challenge at GDC for his entry, Peacebomb! Smith is currently editing a novel, his third unpublished book, which is a collision of Southern Gothic and Silicon Valley.

N. Evan Van Zelfden

Mr Van Zelfden is editor of Interactive Age, a peer-journal printed twice-yearly for an audience of executives, creatives, and decision-makers in the video-game industry. The magazine features essays, research, roundtables, case studies, and regular columns from the presidents of both the Entertainment Software Association and the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. Mixing substance with style, Interactive Age offers a platform to elevate game industry discourse, and provides deep insights to anyone who wants to know how to succeed in interactive entertainment - and while readers respect its weighty package, Interactive Age not only informs, but delights.

Margaret Wallace
playmatics.com
Margaret Wallace is an American entrepreneur, video game and media professional. Margaret Wallace is the CEO of Playmatics (www.playmatics.com), a company dedicated to bringing rich games and applications to the Internet, in social media networks, and on a variety of connected gaming platforms. Prior to forming Playmatics, Margaret was CEO of Rebel Monkey, a venture-backed company focused on creating a free-to-play game world and community platform utilizing virtual goods and microtransactions. Before Rebel Monkey, she was a founding member and CEO of Skunk Studios in San Francisco, CA, one of the first-ever casual game companies and portals. Margaret has also worked with A&E Television Networks, Shockwave, PF.Magic, Mattel and Mindscape and with numerous brands, licensed products, gaming portals and original IP.

Tony Walsh
www.PhantomCompass.com
Tony Walsh is a multi-disciplined senior creative specializing in digital games. He has helped plan and execute Web and cross-platform projects since the early 1990s. Internationally-noted as a thought leader in the area of games and game-culture, Walsh produces and directs game projects through his Toronto-based production company, Phantom Compass. As founding director of Phantom Compass, Walsh leads the company in providing products and services to broadcasters and media producers in Canada, the US and UK. Since 2008, he has co-written the interactive component of BBC Three series "Spooks: Code 9," created an Alternate Reality Game in support of Hollywood B-movie "Bangkok Dangerous" and co-produced a suite of games for a CBC TV series. He is currently at work on several educational games on such topics as Greek drama, civic engagement, and the Klondike Gold Rush. He has developed and taught game design courses for George Brown College and Centennial College in Canada. He has coached film, television, and interactive producers for the CBC (Canada), AFTRS (Australia), and for BAVC (USA). He is a professional associate of AFTRS, a “mastermind” with the Royal Academy of Art (The Hague, the Netherlands) and has been an advisory board member of Screenburn at SXSW (USA).