Here is a quick list of some of the exciting speakers attending the conference.
Jessica Alter
Director of Platform and Business Development, Bebo
Jessica is Director of Platform and Business Development at Bebo. She leads the platform strategy and community at Bebo as well as multiple business development efforts. Prior to Bebo Jessica worked in business development at Hands-On Mobile. She holds a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from University of Michigan and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Robert Balahura
Rob founded J2Play in 2000 by creating and commercializing the world’s first mobile multiplayer game for J2ME handsets, and following that with the worlds first cross-media web to mobile multiplayer game & SDK. Since then, J2Play has created a solution and SDK’s for creating social cross-media games with web, mobile and pc platforms. Today, J2Play provides an open game solution that enables rapid development & self-publishing of social and multiplayer games on all key platforms with the social site identity as the root of all communication and game play. The J2Play solution helps to enable web, mobile, and PC game developers to independently build their business on top of all social sites and spark growth in the social games market.
Patrick Chanezon
OpenSocial API Evangelist, Google
In the past 2 years Google has gone from offering 3 SOAP APIs to its core services, Ads and Search, to more than 40 APIs using various technologies (REST, Ajax, Java) and covering a wide array of developer needs, with two main themes: giving developers programmatic access to Google services, and making the web better through standards and open source offerings (GWT, Gears). In 2007 Google started cooperating with other industry players to create new standard platforms in areas where they were needed: OpenSocial for social applications and Android for Mobile. During these 2 years Google has grown a team dedicated to developer relations.
Jing Chen
Co-Founder of Developer Analytics
Jing Chen is Co-Founder of Developer Analytics, a third-party analytics and media measurement website for social media. Previously, she was a Program Manager at Microsoft working on Live Meeting and an investment banking analyst at Lehman Brothers in the Global Communications and Media Group. Jing graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a dual degree in computer science/design and finance from the Wharton School.
Siqi Chen
CEO and Co-Founder, Serious Business, inc.
Siqi Chen is a founder of a YCombinator-funded startup in the Facebook space and a top ranked developer on the Facebook platform. He was previously a product manager at video sharing site Veoh and a software engineer at the semantic search startup Powerset.
Ranah Edelin
VP, The Sims Internet Group, EA
Ranah Edelin is VP of The Sims Internet Group, the team that manages all of the online businesses for The Sims Label. The Sims Label is one of the 4 big divisions of EA and The Sims is the best-selling PC game franchise of all time, having sold over 100 million units since its launch in 2000.
The Sims Internet Group manages the core thesims2.com site (a huge community site and virtual item exchange for The Sims players) as well as two new online-only services. One of the services is a creativity community focused on karaoke and movie mashups (using the company he co-founded called SingShot as the base) called The Sims On Stage and the other is a casual games site currently in private beta called The Sims Carnival where people can play, create, and share casual games.
Prior to joining EA, Ranah was co-founder and CEO of SingShot Media, the online karaoke website that he co-founded in 2006 and that EA acquired in 2007.
Before starting SingShot, Ranah was at RealNetworks/Listen.com and was part of the core executive team that built the Rhapsody digital music service. Ranah was VP/GM of Business Development, Corporate Development, and International at Listen.com/ RealNetworks. He was responsible for all content licensing and distribution deals for the Rhapsody digital music service. Specifically, Ranah was responsible for Rhapsody being the first company to get on-demand subscription licenses from all five major record labels and for signing strategic partnerships with companies like Best Buy and Comcast. Ranah also served as the business lead in RealNetworks’ acquisition of Listen.com.
Ranah has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA from Brown University. He also received a Japanese government scholarship to study at Nagoya University and is a Japanese language speaker.
Eric Eldon
IEric came to VentureBeat through a startup. He had cofounded a company in 2005, called Writewith, that made software to help reporters and other writers manage their editorial processes. He approached Matt Marshall about trying it out, back in February of 2007, but Matt was a one-man band at the time… and was looking to expand. So Eric tried his hand at reporting, beginning that March, and it went well. Much better than the startup, in fact. So he started writing for VentureBeat full-time that July. Writewith itself grew out of Eric’s experiences as a reporter, a news editor and finally the business manager at The Stanford Daily, the student newspaper at Stanford University. Writewith was originally designed to organize the chaos of The Daily’s newsroom. More generally… Eric was born and raised in Corvallis, Oregon, he has lived in South Africa, El Salvador and Guatemala, and he speaks increasingly poor Spanish. He graduated from Stanford with a B.A. in International Relations, in 2005. He lives in Mountain View, California, one of the many hearts of Silicon Valley. At VentureBeat, he edits its DigitalMedia category, where he works with Dean “The Machine” Takahashi, MG “Machine Gun” Siegler, and contributors. The team covers the convergence of web and mobile technologies with more traditional media and advertising industries.
Jonathan Epstein
CEO, DoubleFusion
Biography coming shortly.
Jim Greer
CEO and Co-Founder, Kongregate
Jim Greer is the co-founder and CEO of Kongregate, a startup that combines nearly 4000 user-submitted Flash games with achievements, high scores, chat, and other community features. Developers share in ad and microtransaction revenue, and retain the rights to their games.
Before founding Kongregate in June 2006, Jim was Technical Director for Pogo at Electronic Arts. He has worked in the game industry since 1991 and hold a Computer Science degree from Princeton University.
Martin Green
VP of Business Development, Meebo
Martin Green is Meebo’s business vice president, responsible for community engagement, revenue strategy and corporate partnerships. He started his career at Morgan Stanley and in 1996, joined an emerging client of Morgan Stanley, CNET. Martin spent 10 years at CNET Networks in a variety of strategic, financial and operations roles, most recently serving on the executive committee and serving as senior vice president of lifestyle and community.
Jameson Hsu
Jameson Hsu is CEO and co-founder of Mochi Media, a platform providing monetization via ads, analytics and distribution tools to the online gaming community. Prior to founding Mochi Media, Jameson co-founded the award winning interactive design firm WDDG where he led partnerships with major brands such as Kraft, HP, Burger King and many more. Jameson has been focused on gaming and interactive advertising for over 10 years, working closely with Flash developers, industry leading artists, advertising agencies, and Fortune 500 clients to develop innovative marketing and communication solutions.
Ping Li
Ping joined Accel in 2004 and focuses primarily on information technology infrastructure (compute, networking, security and storage), as well as digital media solutions. He currently serves on the Board of Directors at BitTorrent, Mochi Media, Mu Security, and YuMe, and he is actively involved in Consentry, Imperva, and Oak Pacific Interactive. Ping was also responsible for Accel’s investment in Reactivity (acquired by Cisco).
Prior to Accel, Ping was a Senior Product Line Manager and Director of Corporate Development at Juniper Networks. He managed Juniper’s M-series router product portfolio that generated revenues over $50 mm/quarter. In addition, Ping worked on Juniper’s acquisition of Netscreen Technologies ($3.5 billion transaction) and led all subsequent security and routing product and R&D integration activities. He also worked as a strategy consultant for Mckinsey & Company, advising technology clients in their growth strategies.
Ping has extensive international experience as well. At Singapore Telecom, he served directly for the executive management team in assessing and investing in Asian growth opportunities. Prior to SingTel, Ping worked at Goldman Sachs Asia, transacting large PTT privatizations and advising telecom clients on complex restructuring and asset divestitures. Ping continues to be active in China investing by working with IDG-Accel China Fund.
Ping holds an A.B. from Harvard University, with honors, and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.
Jeremy Liew
Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners
Jeremy Liew invests primarily in the internet and mobile sectors, with a particular interest in social media, gaming, commerce, and methods for increasing monetization. He joined Lightspeed in early 2006. Previously, Jeremy was with AOL, first as SVP of Corporate Development and Chief of Staff to the CEO, and then as General Manager of Netscape. Jeremy joined AOL from InterActiveCorp (originally USA Networks) where he was VP of Strategic Planning. While there, he was responsible for acquisitions, divestitures and investments in TV Networks, consumer internet companies and online travel companies.Jeremy started working in the consumer internet industry as an early employee of CitySearch in 1996 where he held a variety of sales management, operational and business development roles. He was also a management consultant at McKinsey and Company. Jeremy holds an MBA from Stanford and a BA/BSc from the Australian National University in Linguistics and Pure Mathematics. Jeremy is a frequent contributor to the Lightspeed blog.
Dave McClure
Dave McClure has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over fifteen years as a developer, entrepreneur, startup advisor, angel investor, blogger, and internet marketing nerd. He is the founder of 500 Hats LLC, and advisor / investor for Mint Software, Spock Networks, Mashery, Simply Hired, TeachStreet, Oortle, CrazyEgg, Eventvue, SlideShare, RichRelevance, HealthUnity, and Canopy Financial.Dave is the conference chair for Graphing Social Patterns, and co-chair for O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo. He was also a guest lecturer at Stanford University for a new course on building Facebook Apps. Dave is a board member for microfinance accelerator Unitus, advisor to microfinance lender Kiva.org, and a co-founder of the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network. Previously Dave was Director of Marketing at PayPal where he founded & ran the PayPal Developer Network, and later VP Evangelism at Simply Hired.Before coming to Silicon Valley, Dave barely graduated from the Johns Hopkins University with a BS in Mathematical Sciences Engineering and a minor in frisbee, billiards, & foosball. His interests include microfinance and economic innovation, entrepreneurship and venture capital, ultimate frisbee, cartoons and animation, and an ever-growing collection of funny-looking hats.For more info on Dave, visit his blog: Master of 500 Hats
Matt Mihaly
Founder, Iron Realms Entertainment
Matt is a veteran of virtual worlds and MMOs, having gotten started in them in the early 90s. In 1996, he founded Iron Realms Entertainment and pioneered the virtual goods sales model with its first MMO - Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands. As CEO, Matt led Iron Realms to become the most successful company of its kind in the last decade in the niche (MUDs) it is in. Under his leadership, Iron Realms released three more successful MMOs: Aetolia, the Midnight Age, Imperian: The Sundered Heavens, Lusternia, Age of Ascension. Matt is currently serving as lead designer and producer on Earth Eternal, Sparkplay’s first MMO. He speaks about virtual world business models and independent game development at industry events like the Game Developer’s Conference and DragonCon, and edited Dr. Richard Bartle’s canonical book, “Designing Virtual Worlds.” Matt earned a Bachelor’s degree in government from Cornell University.
Jason Oberfest
VP of Business Development, MySpace
Jason Oberfest is Vice President, Business Development for MySpace. Prior to MySpace Jason served as Managing Director of Business Development and Product Management for Los Angeles Times Interactive. In 2006 Jason launched a first phase redesign of latimes.com which led to a 279% increase in monthly page view growth while growing online display ad revenue by 133% and CPC ad revenue by 136%. Following the redesign Jason continued to improve key audience metrics and boost advertising effectiveness by partnering with industry leading startups including Netvibes, Aggregate Knowledge, Eventful and Mixx.com. During his tenure at the LA Times Jason also created the entertainment awards franchise The Envelope (http://theenvelope.com). From 1999-2005 Jason served as Vice President of Strategic Planning at Blast Radius, a product development consultancy. In this role Jason founded the strategic planning division of Blast Radius and led the design and development of media and commerce websites for Sony, Nintendo, Viacom, Warner Music Group, A&E Television Networks and others. Jason worked with AOL from 2002-2005 developing AOL Shopping, AOL Search, AOL.com, and other products. Blast Radius was acquired by the WPP Group in 2007..
Dan Ogles
Dan Olges is a founder and VP of Game Mechanics at Conduit Labs. Dan has had a long career in multiplayer social gaming, working on Guitar Hero and Rock Band with Harmonix, purchased in 2006 by Viacom/MTV for $175m. Prior to than Dan was with Turbine, Inc where he was a founding
member of Dungeon’s & Dragons Online, and helped develop Lord of the Rings Online and Asheron’s Call 2.
Rajat Paharia
Rajat Paharia is the founder and CEO of Bunchball, creators of Nitro - the platform that’s driving user engagement on sites across the internet. Nitro distills concepts from behavioral economics and game design into a web service that major media companies, social networks, ISPs, and others are
using to drive user behavior and increase engagement on their web sites.
Mark Pincus
Mark is one of the leading entrepreneurs of the Internet, having founded and established four companies. His latest venture is leading social game network Zynga GameNetwork.
With a critical, visionary eye, Mark foreshadowed the popularity of social networks when he founded Tribe.net in 2003, one of the first online communities. The core tribe assets were eventually sold to Cisco to provide an initial platform for its digital media services group. Today, tribe continues to operate with a stable community of several hundred thousand users posting content that is view by 2 million unique visitors a month.
Prior to Tribe, Mark founded and served as chairman and CEO of SupportSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: SPRT), a publicly traded enterprise software company, formerly known as Support.com. Mark founded SupportSoft in August 1997 along with Cadir Lee and Scott Dale and built one of the world’s leading providers of service and support automation software.
Mark earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and a MBA from Harvard Business School. A native of Chicago, Mark has lived in several cities across America including Philadelphia, Boston, Washington DC and Denver. Currently, he resides in San Francisco with his dog, Zynga.
Shervin Pishevar
CEO and Co-Founder, Social Gaming Network
Shervin Pishevar is the CEO and co-founder of Social Gaming Network (SGN), which he helped incubate from within Webs.com Inc. Since its inception in September 2007, SGN has grown to more than a billion page views per month and more than 15 million users (www.socialgn.com).
Named “Bill Gates’ Worst Nightmare” by the Financial Times, Shervin is a visionary technology entrepreneur, published researcher and technology incubation expert, best known for helping usher in the on demand web computing era and the visionary behind the first web operating system with his first startup, WebOS.
Shervin has an extensive track record for technology innovation and his achievements have been highlighted by the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, LA Times, CNN and CNBC and Slashdot.
Anu Shukla
Founder and CEO, Offerpal Media
Anu Shukla is a serial entrepreneur. Prior to founding Offerpal Media, she was the founder and CEO of Mybuys Inc. where she currently serves on the Board of Directors. Mybuys is a venture-backed company in the eCommerce personalization market. Prior to Mybuys, Anu pioneered the category of Internet Marketing Automation as founder and CEO of Rubric, Inc. Rubric was acquired in 2000 for $366 million.
Prior to Rubric, Anu has held a variety of executive roles including the VP of Marketing and Product Strategy at Versata (VATA), and Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Product Management at Compuware/Uniface Corporation (CPWR).
Anu serves on the Board of Directors of FWE&E (Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives), International Museum of Women (imow.org), and the Advisory Board for the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University. She was named to the Computer Industry “Dream Team” by Business 2.0 magazine in 2004, awarded the YSU Distinguished Alumni award in 2005, and the Entrepreneur of the Year by the Washington D.C. based Dialogue on Diversity organization in 2005.
Kristian Segerstrale
Kristian Segerstrale is the CEO and co-founder of Playfish, the social games company behind Facebook top-5 game Who Has The Biggest Brain?. Prior to Playfish Kristian served as Managing Director of Europe of Glu Mobile (Nasdaq: GLUU), and was a co-founder of Glu Mobile Europe (Macrospace Ltd) in 2001. As Managing Director of Europe Kristian was responsible for the rapid growth of Glu’s European business, as well as being a contributor to the company’s successful IPO in Q1 2007. During his 6-year tenure at Glu, Kristian was a driving force in the creation of more than 40 mobile titles including chart topping ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’ and multi-award winners such as the ‘Ancient Empires’ series. During his time at Glu Kristian was also responsible for forging relationships with key Glu brand partners including Konami, Celador, Codemasters and Cartoon Network. Kristian has been on the GDC Mobile advisory board since 2006 and was voted one of top-50 most influential executives in Mobile Entertainment in December 2006 in ME Magazine. He holds an MSc from London School of Economics and an MA (Cantab) in Economics from Cambridge University.
Justin Smith
Justin Smith is the editor of InsideFacebook, the first Facebook-focused blog, covering the business of Facebook and the Facebook Platform for developers and marketers. Justin is also the Product Manager at Watercooler, a developer of sports and television entertainment Facebook applications. Millions of Facebook members have joined Watercooler’s applications since their launch. Justin has a degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University.
Bret Terrill
CEO and co-founder, Tenuki
Bret is the CEO and co-founder of Tenuki, Inc., a social games development company. He also writes the about the social games industry at his blog Bret on Social Games.
Alex Terry
Alex Terry is an avid gamer and a lifelong entrepreneur with extensive industry experience in the fields of Internet services, software and entertainment; and has a proven track record in building technology startups into market leaders.
Most recently Alex served as co-founder, vice president and general manager for AOL’s Voice Services Division. In this position Alex was responsible for a portfolio of four consumer services with over one million paying customers, a suite of wholesale offerings, and a wholly owned subsidiary in Canada as well as overseeing all aspects of AOL’s Voice business.
Prior to AOL, Alex was co-founder and chief operating officer of ThinkLink (acquired by Microsoft, 2001), a privately held telecommunications Enhanced Service Provider delivering unified messaging and integrated calling services over one of the country’s fist VoIP networks. During his tenure, ThinkLink reached over 5 million account holders using ad-supported and free-paid- up-sell revenue. As an Internet pioneer, Alex co-founded and served as CEO for RockWeb, an award winning online music company.
Alex holds multiple patents for his work in integrated communications, Internet services and interactive billing systems. Alex is a graduate of Harvard Business School and Dartmouth College.
Dean Takahashi
Dean Takahashi is a writer for VentureBeat. Prior to his currrent job, he was the Tech Talk Columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, where he wrote gadget reviews and opinion pieces on technology in Silicon Valley. He also wrote the Dean & Nooch on Gaming and Tech Talk blogs and did a regular video podcast on gaming. He has been a journalist for 20 years, most of it covering technology business news. Before he joined the Mercury News in 2002, he was a senior writer at the Red Herring magazine from 2000 to 2002. Before that, he was a staff writer in the San Francisco office of the Wall Street Journal from 1996 to 2000. His first job at the Mercury News was as a chip industry reporter from 1994 to 1996. Before that, he worked at the Los Angeles Times Orange County Edition, the Orange County Register, and the Dallas Times Herald. He has a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University (1987) and a bachelor’s degree in English from UC Berkeley (1986). He is the author of two books, “The Xbox 360 Uncloaked” published in 2006 and “Opening the Xbox” published in 2002. He lives in the suburbs of San Jose and is an avid gamer. His favorite game is Halo.
Charles Yong
Co-Founder, Developer Analytics
Charles Yong is Co-Founder of Developer Analytics, a third-party direct measurement analytics service for social networking applications. His interest in social graph analytics stems from a background in computational genomics, epidemiology and outbreak analysis, and machine learning. Previously he has worked at the National Institutes of Health, as well as both the Computational Genomics Research Group and Taylor Plant Biology labs at UC Berkeley. Charles graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in Bioengineering and is pending deferred matriculation at the Stanford School of Medicine.
