Panel: User-Generated Content

Kevin Barrett is the Director of Design at BioWare Corp. based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. BioWare is a world-renowned leader in the development of electronic role-playing games. Kevin is an industry veteran who has worked on electronic and adventure games for over 20 years. He has lectured to numerous academic and industry groups on the subjects of game design and development, and is an active supporter of bringing new, emerging talent into the world of games.

Panel: Television Futures

Josh Bernoff, a vice president at Forrester, has been analyzing television and entertainment for Forrester since 1995. He regularly advises top executives at media and technology companies on issues like television's digital transformation, video on-demand, and music downloads. In an interview for "60 Minutes," Mike Wallace identified Josh as "the top TV industry analyst at Forrester Research, the authority on where TV is going." Josh also shares his insights on the impact of changing technologies and business models on consumers, companies, and industries in his Weblog, Devices, Media, And The Future Of Everything.

Panel: Fan Cultures

danah boyd is a doctoral candidate in the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley, a fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Communications, and a social media researcher at Yahoo! Her dissertation focuses on how youth engage in networked publics like MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Xanga, etc. In particular, she is interested in how youth formulate a presentation of self and negotiate socialization in mediated contexts where the audience is often unknown. This work is funded by the MacArthur Foundation as part of a broader grant on digital youth and informal learning. For more information on danah, see her blog: Apophenia.

Panel: Fan Cultures

Molly Chase is Executive Producer of Cartoon Network New Media. Chase's experience in the Entertainment and New Media industry includes ownership of two start-up companies and eight years at Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. As Executive Producer of Cartoon Network New Media, she oversees the creation of interactive and emerging media entertainment offerings based on Cartoon Network characters and properties, including mobile content, online gaming, broadband video and popular Internet sites including flagship CartoonNetwork.com, which attracts more than 10 million unique users per month. In this role Chase oversaw an extensive online gaming event in support of Cartoon Network's "Codename: Kids Next Door" that earned a 2005 Emmy® nomination. She was a featured speaker on panels at the 2005 Ottawa International Animation Festival, Anime Expo 2006 and Comic-Con 2006. She currently serves on the board of MentorE, a start-up non-profit dedicated to linking at-risk youth with much-needed mentors.

Panel: Transmedia Properties

Alex Chisholm is founder of [ICE]³ Studios, a media research and development consultancy that creates transmedia entertainment and educational properties, and is currently developing several projects with NBC Universal, including an educational media product for NBC News, fan research around NBC's Heroes (with IPG Media's The Consumer Experience Practice), educational games for NBC Weather+Plus, and online games for NBC Olympics-Beijing 2008. He is Co-Director of the Education Arcade at MIT, and over the past seven years has collaborated on research, product, and program development with Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Sony Pictures Imageworks, the American Theatre Wing, LeapFrog, NBC Universal, and the MacArthur Foundation.

Panel: User-Generated Content

Caterina Fake is Director of Tech Development at Yahoo! Inc. In February 2004, she launched Flickr, an online photo sharing application, which she developed during her time at Ludicorp. Previously, Fake worked as the Creative Director of Yellowball, a collaborative animation space, at Interval Research. She was also an Art Director at Salon.com and winner of numerous design awards. She started her career as a Lead Designer at Organic Online.

Panel: Television Futures

Andy Hunter is a Planning Director at GSD&M, an Austin, TX based communication agency serving clients including BMW, the new AT&T, and Wal-Mart. He is the co-creator of GSD&M's new marketing and connections planning practices, assisting clients adapt to a rapidly changing media environment. Previously, his work spanned across the marketing disciplines of branding, relationship marketing, interactive, and traditional broadcast media at New York-based agencies including Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam and Hill Holliday.

Panel: Transmedia Properties

Michael Lebowitz is the co-founder and CEO of Big Spaceship, a New  York-based creative agency whose work has received numerous awards, including the Cannes Lion, Key Art, One Show and Clio Awards. He has lectured, led seminars internationally on design and interactive marketing, and been a juror for many industry awards.

Panel: User-Generated Content

Ji Lee is the founder of the widely publicized Bubble Project and and the author of two books: Talk Back: The Bubble Project and Univers Revolved: A 3-Dimensional Alphabet. Born in Seoul, Korea and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Lee lives in New York and works as an art director at communication agency Droga5. Previously, he worked at Saatchi & Saatchi. Lee is a New York Book Award Finalist and the winner of multiple awards, including the AIGA: "50 books/ 50 covers Award", the "RISD Athena Emerging Designer Award", and a Saatchi & Saatchi "World Changing Ideas Award". Lee also teaches at the School of Visual Arts and has given numerous lectures including MoMA, Columbia University, and GEL Conference. Lee's work has appeared in ABC World News, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Guardian and Wired among others.

Panel: Not the Real World Anymore

John Lester joined Linden Lab, creators of the virtual world Second Life, in 2005. He focuses on community development and works with educators interested in using virtual worlds for academic purposes. Previously, he was the Information Systems Director for the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and as a Research Associate in Neurology at the Harvard Medical School, where he used computers in creative ways to solve healthcare problems. He has also conducted medical research at Boston University's teaching labs.

Panel: Transmedia Properties

Paul Levitz is the president and publisher of DC Comics. He has been a comic book fan (editor/ publisher of the  award-winning The Comic Reader), editor (Batman, DC's 9-11 benefit book), and writer (Legion of Super-Heroes, Superman newspaper strip). In three decades at DC, he has been involved in the translation of their characters to media ranging from comics to film, television, cartoons, Internet programming, video games, children's books, prose and even musical theatre.

Panel: Not the Real World Anymore

Ron Meiners has worked in a wide range of online community applications, from casual games to virtual worlds, from Mplayer.com and Uru Live to a volunteer position as the Online Community Advocate for the Burning Man organization. He is passionate about the potential for online communities to foster relationships between participants and to open the range of experiences to collaborative creativity, transformative experiences, and the evolution of social organization. He is committed to the exploration of new forms of interaction and collaboration online. His current position is Developer Relations Manager at Multiverse.net, the platform for independant and academic MMOG and virtual world creation.

Panel: Television Futures

Betsy Morgan is a Senior Vice President for CBS Digital Media and the General Manager of CBSNews.com. She is in charge of the network's 24-hour broadband, on-demand news service, which draws on the worldwide, award-winning resources of CBS News. Under Ms Morgan's leadership CBSNews.com has been an industry-leading provider of advertiser-supported free broadband video, and its excellence has been recognized with several prestigious industry awards. Ms. Morgan earned an MBA in Business Administration from Harvard Business School and a BA in Political Science and Economics from Colby College. Currently, she is the President of New York Women in Communications, Inc and is on the Board of Overseers for Colby College and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Panel: Fan Cultures

Diane Nelson currently serves as the president of Warner Premiere, the newly created direct-to-DVD production arm at Warner Bros. Entertainment. For the past decade, she has been working with Warner in various positions, including Senior Vice President of domestic theatrical marketing and Senior Vice President of family entertainment. Most recently, Nelson worked as Executive Vice President of global brand management and strategized worldwide distribution for franchises such as Harry Potter. Nelson came to Warner from Walt Disney Records, where she worked on the promotion and marketing of soundtracks.

Panel: User-Generated Content

Rob Tercek is President and Co Founder of MultiMedia Networks, a new business combining social networking and rich media. He has 20 years experience in television, Internet and mobile content and marketing. He was Chief Marketing Officer of the (M)FORMA Group, a global publisher of mobile entertainment. As President of Applications & Services at PacketVideo, he launched the world's first multimedia content service on mobile devices for NTT DoCoMo's 3G network. Earlier, he served as the SVP Digital Media at Sony Pictures Entertainment, co-founded 7th Level and was a Creative Director at MTV. Tercek lectures at the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television.

Panel: Television Futures

Mark Warshaw is a writer/producer/director who, in 2006, founded FlatWorld Intertainment, Inc. to produce original interactive content and consult with entertainment companies and artists on alternative media. Warshaw has worked on The CW's Smallville since its inception in 2001, producing its online, DVD, corporate partnership and brand extension initiatives. He helped build Smallville into one of the most popular television properties online, assisted national advertisers in achieving their brand objectives in television integration, and produced DVD titles eclipsing $100 million in sales. His projects have won both national and global awards. In addition to writing for Smallville, Warshaw created and directed the original story-extending webisodes The Chloe Chronicles in 2003. He has since directed two additional series of Chronicles and is currently in production on the fourth.