Nichol Bradford

Nichol Bradford is no stranger to Action-Adventure! She works in the fast growing, exciting video and computer game industry. As the Global Director of Strategic Growth at Vivendi Universal Games (VUG), Bradford reports to CEO Bruce Hack and works on special projects, portfolio planning, and manages the strategic/marketing relationships with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Before moving into this special role, Bradford spent two years in Marketing at VUG. As a Sr. Global Brand Manager she marketed video games tied to major film properties like Van Helsing, Fight Club and Scarface. She worked extensively with Universal Studios Motion Picture Group, Twentieth Century Fox and other Studios/content holders to bring properties to the 3-D interactive world. Prior to VUG, Bradford spent two years at Disney Interactive/Buena Vista Games, a division of The Walt Disney Company, as a Marketing/Licensing Manager on video games for Finding Nemo, Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Lilo & Stitch and Spy Kids among others. During this time, she worked closely with Miramax Films, Pixar, and Jerry Bruckheimer Films. Nichol Bradford is committed to the growth and development of the video game industry as evidenced by her three-year Chairmanship of an annual art exhibit titled, Into The Pixel: A Celebration of Video Game Art. Into the Pixel is a joint project between E3, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) where Bradford sits on the Board of the Prints and Drawing Council (PDC). She is passionate about encouraging diversity in the video game industry. To that end, Bradford is a Board Member of the Urban Video Game Academy (UVGA), whose mission is better prepare students in disadvantaged areas for postsecondary education and technology careers by teaching them the fundamentals of video game design and development. In addition, she organizes an annual dinner at E3 for diverse executives. In 2001, Nichol received her MBA in Strategic Management from the Wharton School of Business. Before graduate school, Bradford worked in New York in cosmetics and fashion licensing at Estee Lauder and The Anne Klein Company. She earned her BBA in Marketing from the University of Houston. Bradford recently completed her first novel, currently titled My Sister’s Keeper. During her spare time, Bradford studies the Tango.
http://www.vugames.com
http://www.intothepixel.com
http://www.uvga.org

Cornelia Brunner

Dr. Brunner has been involved in the research, production, and teaching of educational technology in a variety of subject areas for thirty years. In addition to conducting research projects about the relationship between learning, teaching, and technology, she has designed and implemented educational materials incorporating technologies to support inquiry-based learning and teaching in science, social studies, media literacy, and the arts. She has worked extensively with staff and students in a variety of school environments on curriculum development projects, teacher support and training, and informal education. She has taught experimental courses at Bank Street College and the Media Workshop New York, in which teachers are introduced to new technologies, learn how to integrate technology into their curriculum, and learn to use multimedia authoring tools to design their own educational programs. Dr. Brunner has also been an industry consultant for the design of educational and entertainment products for children of all ages during the last thirty years.

Mia Consalvo

Mia Consalvo is an Associate Professor in the School of Telecommunications at Ohio University. She is the executive editor of the Association of Internet Researchers’ Research Annual series, and she has also edited the volume Women and Everyday Uses of the Internet: Agency and Identity with Susanna Paasonen. Her research focuses on women and games, the videogame industry, and pedagogical uses of games. She has published related work in The Video Game Theory Reader, as well as the journals On the Horizon, Television & New Media, and The Journal of Communication Inquiry. Consalvo has given more than 40 conference and invited presentations, and is on the steering committee of Women in Games International. She is currently writing a book on the role of cheating in the digital game industry.
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~consalvo
http://memorycard.blogs.com

Mary Flanagan

Mary Flanagan holds an MFA and MA from the University of Iowa and studied film studies and experimental filmmaking, and holds a PhD in Computational Media. In the 1990s, Flanagan was a producer/designer at Human Code, an Austin based software developer, garnering over 20 international awards for titles produced for The Discovery Channel, Creative Wonders/ABC, and Knowledge Adventure. Currently Flanagan's projects are primarily networked and computer-based works which investigate everyday life and the influence of technology, including net.culture, computer gaming, and mundane technological tools. The works are created for the net or installation.

Tracy Fullerton

Tracy Fullerton, M.F.A., is a game designer, educator and writer with fifteen years of professional experience. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Interactive Media Division of the USC School of Cinema-Television where she serves as Co-Director of the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab. Tracy is the author of Game Design Workshop: Designing, Prototyping and Playtesting Games, a design textbook in use at game programs worldwide. Prior to joining the USC faculty, she was President and founder of the interactive television game developer, Spiderdance, Inc. Spiderdance’s games included NBC’s Weakest Link, MTV’s webRIOT, The WB’s No Boundaries, History Channel’s History IQ, Sony Game Show Network’s Inquizition and TBS’s Cyber Bond. Before starting Spiderdance, Tracy was a founding member of the New York design firm R/GA Interactive. As a producer and creative director she created games and interactive products for clients including Sony, Intel, Microsoft, AdAge, Ticketmaster, Compaq, and Warner Bros. among many others. Notable projects include Sony’s Multiplayer Jeopardy! and Multiplayer Wheel of Fortune and MSN’s NetWits, the first multiplayer online game show. Additionally, Tracy was Creative Director at the interactive film studio Interfilm, where she wrote and co-directed the “cinematic game” Ride for Your Life, starring Adam West and Matthew Lillard. She began her career as a designer at Bob Abel’s company Synapse, where she worked on the interactive documentary Columbus: Encounter, Discovery and Beyond and other early interactive projects. Tracy’s work has received numerous industry honors including best Family/Board Game from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, ID Magazine’s Interactive Design Review, Communication Arts Interactive Design Annual, several New Media Invision awards, iMix Best of Show, the Digital Coast Innovation Award, IBC’s Nombre D’Or, and Time Magazine’s Best of the Web. In December 2001, she was featured in the Hollywood Reporter’s “Women in Entertainment Power 100” issue.

Betty Hayes

Elisabeth (Betty) Hayes is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with joint appointments in the Departments of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. She is part of the UW Games, Learning, and Society Research group (http://www.academiccolab.org/initiatives/gapps.html). She brings to gaming research a background in adult education, specifically adult literacy education, gender studies, adult learning and diversity issues. She has been on the faculties at Syracuse University and Rutgers University, and was an adult literacy teacher and teacher trainer. Dr. Hayes’s current research interests include understanding how gender influences the construction of virtual identities and game play, exploring sports games as examples of simulated communities of practice, and using virtual worlds to foster digital and design literacies, particularly for girls and women. She is the author or editor of numerous articles, chapters, and books, including Women as Learners (2000) and “Women, Video Gaming, & Learning: Beyond Stereotypes” (TechTrends, December 2005). She often can be found in the dungeons of World of Warcraft or the dance halls of Second Life.

Kristin Hughes

Kristin Hughes is Assistant Professor in Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design. Her research focus is the creation of design-based programming and products for at-risk youth to develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. She uses a research-intensive approach that emphasizes front-end evaluation to build upon the participants' authentic experiences and questions. For the past three years she has been collaborating with an inter-disciplinary team on a National Science Foundation funded exploration of gender-sensitive science-based communications, Explanatoids. The Explanatoids project has developed, produced and evaluated signs, videos and other media, seeking opportunities to support informal science learning in the everyday environment where Pittsburgh's families gather (http://www.explanatoids.org).
Her current project, Click! Urban Adventure (www.click2005.org), is designed to immerse middle school girls in an interactive, mixed-reality game that provides them with the tools they need to learn discipline-specific science, technology, engineering, and mathematics skills. The goal of Click! is to establish an educational pathway for middle school girls that excite their interest in science and technology. Ms. Hughes has a master's degree in visual communication from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Mimi Ito

Daniel James

Daniel co-founded Three Rings and serves as Chairman of the Board and CEO. In addition to his duties as CEO he was Three Rings original game designer, responsible for the concept and direction of Puzzle Pirates. Prior to Three Rings Daniel consulted for Electronic Arts, Skotos, Codemasters and Launch Media. He moved to the US from London in 1998 to work for Sierra Online as a designer on Middle-earth Online, after plotting for two years to acquire the Tolkien online game rights for an MMOG startup. Daniel co-founded his first online game company, Avalon, in 1990, bringing the game to the internet in 1994. In 1995 he co-founded a web consultancy, Sense, which continues to operate profitably. Daniels experience creating and playing online games dates back to teenage wiz-dom on Essex MUD in 1982. Daniel has a first-class degree in Computer Science and Philosophy from the University of Leeds. He has been a speaker or moderator at conferences including E3, GDC, Austin Games Conference, Casual Games Conference and others, and is a member of the IGDA Online Games steering committee.

Henry Jenkins III

Henry Jenkins III, the John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities and Director of MIT Comparative Media Studies, has spent his career studying media and the way people incorporate it into their lives. He is the principle investigator for the MIT-Microsoft Games-to-Teach project, which is examining the educational potential of computer and video games. He writes a regular column, The Digital Renaissance, for Technology Review magazine and is currently writing a book designed to explain "why media change matters. He testified in 1999 before the U.S. Senate during the hearings on media violence that followed the Littleton, Colorado shootings, testified before the Federal Communications Commission about media literacy, and spoke to the governor's board of the World Economic Forum about intellectual property law. His books include Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture (co-edited with Tara McPherson and Jane Shattuc, 2003), From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games (co-editor with Justine Cassell, 1998), The Children's Cultural Reader (editor, 1998), Science Fiction Audiences: Doctor Who, Star Trek and Their Followers (with John Tullock, 1995), Classical Hollywood Comedy (co-editor with Kristine Brunovska Karnick, 1994), Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1992), What Made Pistachio Nuts?: Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic (1992), and the forthcoming The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture. Jenkins earned his doctorate in communication arts from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a master's degree in communication studies from the University of Iowa.

Caitlin Kelleher

Caitlin Kelleher is currently finishing a PhD in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University where she is a member of the Alice research group. Alice (www.alice.org) is a programming environment for novice programmers that allows users to construct programs that control 3D virtual worlds using drag and drop. Alice is currently in use in introductory programming classes at more than 60 universities and 40 high schools across the country. Caitlin’s research focuses on creating a programming environment based on Alice that will give middle school girls a positive introduction to computer programming through the activity of creating short animated movies. Over the past 4 years, she has observed hundreds of middle school girls learning how to program by creating stories in versions of Alice. When not working, Caitlin enjoys spending time playing her harp and throwing frisbees for her dog. For more info: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~caitlin

Janne Kouri (invited)

Regional Director, North America Sulake Corporation

Brenda Laurel

Brenda Laurel is a designer, writer, researcher, and performer. She chairs the graduate Media Design Program at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. She also serves as a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, working as a Senior Director in Sun Labs. Since 1976, her work has focused on experience design, interactive story, and the intersection of culture and technology. Dr. Laurel co-founded Purple Moon to create interactive media for girls in 1996 (acquired by Mattel in 1999). The company was based on four years of research in gender and technology at Interval Research Corp. In 1990 she co-founded Telepresence Research, developing technology and applications for virtual reality and remote presence. Other employers include Atari, Activision, and Apple. She edited The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design (Addison-Wesley, 1990) and authored Computers as Theatre (Addison-Wesley, 1991 and 1993) and Utopian Entrepreneur (MIT Press, 2001). Her latest book is Design Research: Methods and Perspectives (MIT Press, 2004). In addition to public speaking and consulting, Dr. Laurel is a member of the Boards of Advisors of several companies and organizations, including Cheskin, the Communication Research Institute of Australia, and the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT. She is active in the digital storytelling movement, the game design community (IGDA) and the ACM.

Nicole Lazzaro

Nicole Lazzaro is the Founder and President of XEODesign, Inc. She has over fifteen years of expertise in Player Experience Research and Design for mass-market entertainment and consumer creativity products. Clients including Sony, LeapFrog, Mattel, Sega, The Learning Company, Xfire, Broderbund, Roxio, Ubisoft, and Maxis. She has a degree in Psychology from Stanford University. For more information: http://xeodesign.com/about.html

Caroline Pelletier

Caroline Pelletier is a researcher in the fields of new media, learning and educational policy at the London Knowledge Lab, University of London. She is currently managing the project 'Making Games: developing games authoring software for educational and creative use'. This is a three-year research and development project funded by the UK government, set up in collaboration with Immersive Education, and which aims to enable young people create their own computer games. The research is investigating the educational benefits a game-authoring tool might offer to young people, particularly girls and students with print literacy difficulties. Caroline also co- teaches the Gaming, Gaming Cultures and Education module on the London Institute of Education’s MA in Media, Culture and Communication. Her research focuses on epistemology, subjectivity, pedagogy and policy in relation to new media technologies for learning and teaching, both in schools and higher education institutions. Previously, she was an independent researcher and consultant advising publishing and technology companies on e-learning, and an editor in academic publishing.

Centre for the study of children, youth and media
http://www.childrenyouthandmediacentre.co.uk/staff.asp?TableName=Overview&RowID=9&PeopleID=13
Institute of Education, London
http://ioewebserver.ioe.ac.uk/ioe/cms/get.asp?cid=8440

Karen Schulman

Vice President Web Games - Electronic Arts

Elizabeth Sweedyk

Elizabeth Sweedyk is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College. http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~z/

T.L. Taylor

T.L. is associate professor at the IT University of Copenhagen and the Center for Computer Games Research. She has been working in the field of internet and multi-user studies for over a decade and has published on topics such as values in design, avatars and online embodiment, powergaming, gender and gaming, pervasive gaming, and intellectual property in MMOGs. Her current book Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (MIT Press, 2006) uses her multi-year ethnography of EverQuest to explore issues related to play and game culture. For more information: http://www.itu.dk/~tltaylor/

Faran Thomason (invited)

Designer, MGA
http://www.fntproductions.com/resume/

Nick Yee

Nick Yee was born and grew up in Hong Kong before starting high school in the US. He earned his undergraduate degree in Psychology at Haverford College. His undergraduate advisor Doug Davis, a Freudian personality psychologist who was fascinated by identity play online, provided the inspiration for much of Nick’s initial interest in online gaming psychology. Nick Yee is currently a PhD student in the Department of Communication at Stanford University doing research in immersive virtual reality and online games. Over the past 5 years, he has surveyed over 35,000 MMORPG players on a wide variety of issues, such as age and gender differences, motivations of play, relationship formation, and problematic usage. Many of these survey findings are available online at The Daedalus Project:http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus At Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, he works with Jeremy Bailenson in designing and analyzing experimental studies exploring social interaction in virtual environments. Many of these studies explore a research area known as Transformed Social Interactions (TSI) - understanding how behaviors and self-representations can be altered in virtual environments to enhance social interactions. More information on these studies can be found at the lab’s website: http://vhil.stanford.edu