Speakers

MICAH ADLER Founder & CEO Fiksu @fiksu Micah is founder and CEO of Fiksu, a mobile app marketing platform used by leading brands, white-hot game developers and up-and-coming ventures to help them grow sustainable mobile app businesses. Micah is steeped in the workings of the mobile app ecosystem. He offers a unique perspective on the formidable challenges facing app marketers as his foray into mobile began with the release of his own app, Fluent News Reader. Leveraging his academic and entrepreneurial backgrounds spanning mathematics, computer science, and performance marketing, he developed the specialized technologies, tools and expertise to grow his app business in the increasingly crowded and complex app marketspace. Realizing that other app developers could benefit from this platform spawned the launch of Fiksu. At Fiksu, Micah also oversees the App Store Competitive Index and Cost per Loyal User Index, a series of industry benchmarks providing insight to help mobile marketers better understand app marketing trends and costs. Micah’s past ventures include Adverplex and CourseAdvisor. He was also a tenured professor of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Micah has a BS from MIT and a PhD in theoretical computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.

PROJJOL BANERJEA VP Marketing & Talent SponsorPay @projjol Projjol is Director of Marketing at SponsorPay, an award-winning Berlin-based start-up that provides an innovative advertising solution for the monetization of premium content or virtual currency on social networks, virtual worlds, mobile apps as well as online games and services. Previously, he worked in London as VP Marketing for mobile payments company Surfpin. Projjol was awarded an MBA by the Saïd Business School in 2009. At Oxford, he was a member of the university’s lightweight rowing programme. Prior to that, he earned degrees in computer science and informatics from DePauw University and Indiana University.

Jeroen Bouwman Head of Content Acquisition Spil Games @jbouwman Jeroen is currently responsible for Content Acquisition at Spil Games and joined in in 2011 to head its licensing team which sources 85% of all gaming content on Spil Games’ social-gaming platforms. Prior to joining Spil Games, Jeroen spent much of his career in the entertainment industry. He spent 11 years at Universal Music Group in various positions, including Head of Digital where he developed games for groups such as Papa Roach and Limp Bizkit. During his time there, he was also Business Development Director, helping large consumer brands integrate music into their marketing. He holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing from the Haarlem Business School.

Paul Bowen VP & GM, Europe Tapjoy @pgbowen With 9 years of experience working in digital media start-up companies and monetizing online content, Paul Bowen is one of the leading advocates of virtual currency in the UK. Formerly at the UK office of Adknowledge (owner of Super Rewards), he is now Vice President of Europe for Tapjoy, Inc. Tapjoy is the leader in discovery, engagement and monetization services for mobile applications. The company’s turnkey in-app advertising platform helps developers acquire cost-effective, high-value new users, drive engagement within their applications, and create incremental income by providing an ad-funded virtual currency based payment method.

Brendan Burke Head of Player Science Playnomics Brendan plays a dual role at Playnomics – focusing on both understanding how players interact with games through the use of predictive analytics, and helping game publishers utilize that information on an ongoing basis. Prior to joining Playnomics, Brendan worked as a research scientist in Genetics and Bioinformatics through the Bio-X graduate program at Stanford, where he did his undergraduate as well. As a bench researcher he developed statistical models for predicting mutation rates in seasonal viruses, like influenza. He specializes in adapting biologically inspired models to predict virality and lifecycle change in online player populations.

Jordan Casey CEO and Founder Casey Games @CaseyGames Jordan Casey is a 12 year old iOS app developer from a place called Waterford in Ireland. Being called "Europe's Youngest iOS App Developer" Jordan's app "Alien Ball" was recently at the number 1 spot in the games section on the Irish App store. In June, Jordan spoke at the Cannes Lions festival among such luminaries as Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter and has been given considerable support and encouragement from Apple. Jordan has also been granted a much coveted developer spotlight on Adobe's website. Jordan believes that HTML5 is the future.

OSCAR CLARK Evangelist Applifer @athanateus

Oscar Clark, Evangelist for Applifer, has been involved with putting social and games together since 1998. His career has been at the cutting edge of online, mobile and console social games and includes roles at British Telecom (Wireplay), RealNetworks, Hutchinson Whampoa (3UK), NVIDIA, Sony’s PlayStation Home and Papaya Mobile. His career has focused on conceiving, bringing to market and managing operationally games services whilst work with an evangelising to Game Developers worldwide. Oscar has also lectured on Game Discovery and Social Freemium design philosophy as well consulting with major studios on how to create successful, profitable mobile games.

Oscar now brings his own brand of insight and evangelism to EveryPlay, Applifer’s mobile game video capture service which enables developers and players to share meaningful moments of gameplay.

Oscar can be contacted on Oscar@applifier.com, through LinkedIn profile (http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/oscar-clark/0/13b/523)

TIM CLOSS CTO Marmalade Tim has over 20 years' experience of commercial software development, and joined Marmalade in 2004. As CTO, Tim has lead the creation and productization of the Marmalade SDK, and continues to drive the company's technology and product strategies. Tim holds a Mathematics degree and Theoretical Physics postgraduate diploma from Cambridge University.

Gerard Cunningham Founder and CEO, Koolbit Former President, Betfair USA @gerardc Gerard is an iGaming leader with operating experience in Europe, Asia and USA. His latest company, Koolbit is the premier, mobile, casino game company. Koolbit's flagship game, City Slots Casino, is one of the most successful casino games on Android (and soon to be on iOS). Prior to founding Koolbit, Gerard was Founder and President of Betfair USA. He led the acquisition and turnaround of TVG, the largest legal online betting business in the USA. In that role, Gerard actively campaigned at State and National levels to regulate online poker and casino gaming, successfully opening up Illinois to online wagering on horseracing. He also led Betfair’s early investment in Kabam, and sat on the board. Kabam is now the largest Social MMO game company in the world. Throughout his career with blue chip startups and corporations Gerard has focused on leveraging technology shifts to create new and durable consumer brands. Mobile is the latest, largest opportunity. Gerard lived and worked all over Europe and Asia before making Silicon Valley his home nearly 20 years ago.

ALEX DALE CMO King.com @alexjamesdale Alex Dale is King.com’s Chief Marketing Officer. He joins King.com from Microsoft, where he was general manager of their consumer and online services group in Central and Eastern Europe. At Microsoft, Dale also led the consumer marketing efforts for Bing, Internet Explorer, Windows Phone, Windows PC, MSN and Hotmail in Western Europe. Prior to Microsoft, he was the founder and managing director of broadband ISP and portal, virgin.net. Part of the Virgin Group of companies, the virgin.net service was sold to NTL Cable in 2004.

Christian Dorffer Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer Mindshapes @MindshapesFChristian is co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Mindshapes, the interactive learning company behind the interactive preschool channel Magic Town. Christian has spent 15 years advising media and technology companies on business and product innovation, branding and marketing. He previously served as SVP in WPP running Millward Brown Optimor in Europe. Prior to this Christian led consultancy projects around the world for Prophet Brand Strategy, CVA and PwC. Christian holds a Master's degree in Economics from CBS and has completed post-graduate studies at Harvard University.

Tom Farrell Marketing Director Swrve @swrve_inc Tom is Marketing Director with Swrve, the world's first game optimisation platform. Swrve enables game developers to analyse, test and optimise game experiences in order to maximise acquisition, retention and monetization rates. Prior to his current role Tom was Digital Brand Manager with Paddy Power, Europe's largest bookmaker, including responsibility for customer marketing programmes across an installed base of over a million users. Tom has a degrees from Trinity College, Dublin, and over 15 years experience in the Irish tech sector.

RICHARD FIRMINGER Managing Director, EMEA Flurry Flurry is a leading data-driven mobile app advertising platform and analytics provider, used by over 60,000 companies across more than 160,000 apps. At Flurry, Richard leads the company’s UK office as well as advertiser sales and publisher relationships across EMEA. Prior to Flurry, Richard led the digital media sales team for Amazon in Europe. Prior to Amazon, Richard was Commercial Director for Northern Europe for Yahoo!, UK MD for Enpocket (sold to Nokia to become Nokia Media Business in 2006), UK Deputy MD & BD Director for AdLink (a direct response media sales organization, sold to HiMedia in 2009) and the first UK Commercial Director for DoubleClick, subsequently sold to AdLink in 2001. Prior to DoubleClick Richard spent nearly 10 years in B2B publishing in tech press on titles such as Computing and Personal Computer World and during this time he launched Information Week and Computer Reseller News in the UK for CMP Media.

John Gilbert Consulting Director Technology & Telecoms YouGov, UK @YouGov @JohnGYouGov John brings over 20 years’ extensive quantitative and qualitative research experience to the team, having worked across many sectors including finance, transportation, retail and telecommunications. Prior to joining YouGov, John worked at Market Probe Europe, heading up the research team as Director of Research and Consulting for the London office. Previous to that, John worked as a Senior Consultant at CFI Group for six years, where he designed, implemented and directed customer satisfaction programmes for Fortune 500 clients. He has also worked, client-side, as Director of Research for United Parcel Service and Motorola. His experience spans B2B and B2C sectors as well as global studies. John specialises in the design and execution of action-orientated projects and programmes which are designed to address business objectives and strategy development. By combining analytics with communications, John helps executives make business decisions and conduct training whilst informing the industry at large.

PAUL GOUGE Founder and CEO Playdemic Paul Gouge, founder and CEO of UK-based Playdemic, will present his vision of what ‘social 2.0’ means in reality. Paul has many years experience creating games on emerging platforms, from set-top boxes to early mobile phones, and even in-flight entertainment systems. In 2007, two of Paul's companies were acquired by Eidos Interactive and where he became head of Eidos Play until 2009 when he founded Playdemic. Paul's mission for Playdemic is to create the best social gaming experiences on connected devices from tablets and smartphones to connected TVs and home devices.

Andrew Hughes CEO & Co-Founder, AbZorba Games Co Founder Social Gaming Association @arwh56Andrew has been at the heart of mobile service creation since 2000 having start-up experince in all the mobile eco-systems including gaming, monetization and marketing. Today, he heads the AbZorba team creating mobile social casino titles, reaching 1 million installs, and extends its social Hub of Fun to white label brands in the iGaming sector. Recently, he has also helped found the Social Gaming Association in London to drive best practice in the social gaming sector.

Tadhg Kelly Game Designer and Consultant WhatGamesAre @TiedtigerTadhg Kelly is the creator of leading game design blog What Games Are, and consults for many companies on game design and development. In addition Kelly writes a weekly column for TechCrunch on the future-forward trends affecting games, a monthly design column for Edge magazine, and is a regular contributor to sites such as Gamasutra. He also teaches game design at the National Film and Television School.

Martin Koppel Chief Revenue Officer and Co-Founder Fortumo @MartinKoppel As a CRO, Martin helps online and mobile and online game developers to maximize their revenue with mobile payments. He brings 8 years of management, sales and marketing experience from different start-ups to Fortumo. Martin holds a MSc in Marketing and Business Administration and he frequently speaks at top industry events.

Alexander Krug CEO SOFTGAMES GmbH @softgames Alexander Krug holds a Master of Arts in Media Management having studied in Mittweida – one of Germany´s most respected media universities. Next to SOFTGAMES Alexander has worked at Yahoo! Germany and managed to re-launch their complete gaming portal. In addition Alex has co-founded 2 successful start-ups, a role that's perfect for him given his ten-plus years of experience making big things happen. SOFTGAMES, founded in 2006 is a developer and publisher of Mobile Games & Apps which has worldwide partnerships with carriers, mobile social networks and mobile portals. Alexander possesses excellent analytical skills and is a person of proven ability to act as a strategic, results-oriented leader who collaboratively develops innovative and cost-effective solutions, spearheads change, and engages the team in creating successful outcomes.

Jussi Laakkonen Founder & CEO Applifier @jussil Jussi Laakkonen is the CEO and founder of Applifier, that is s all about helping small and medium sized game developers grow their games. Applifier's operates the largest cross-promotion network that reaches 150 million monthly active users, Impact video ads that help developers monetize users and find new players with game trailers and Everyplay, a mobile games network, that lets players share their most memorable game replays.

Dan Laughlin Sr. Director, Games Business Development Flurry Dan Laughlin leads developer relationships for Flurry's games publishing initiative, partnered with Activision. Prior to Flurry, Dan led the global business development team at 6waves, a mobile and social games publisher. Dan joined 6waves from Microsoft Game Studios where he was both a Lead Producer and a Senior Business Development Manager. Early in his career Dan spent time at both Thomson Reuters and MarketOne International. Dan holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and a BA from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Arseny Lebedev Managing Director SignusLabs @signuslabs Arseny Lebedev co-founded Signus Labs, where he manages marketing and partnership strategies. Since its founding in 2009, Signus Labs grew organically to a 22-person full service development studio that delivers high quality work on multiple platforms to millions of players. Arseny follows a balanced development philosophy -- gameplay and profitability are fundamental to a successful project. Signus develops social games on Facebook, Mobile Platforms, Kindle, and HTML5. Prior to Signus, Labs Arseny worked in a marketing role at Large Animal Games. Additionally, Arseny resides on the board of a solar energy manufacturer, where he contributes to strategic decisions.

Christine Lee Business Development Lead Chartboost @thecircuscafe Christine Lee is the Business Development Lead at Chartboost- a technology platform that helps game developers increase App Store success of each game launch by cross promoting within their portfolio of games. Chartboost also has the first and only Direct Deals Marketplace with a social network for game developers to connect and negotiate advertising deals with full transparency. In Christine's current role, she overseas North America publisher relations and strategic partnerships. Previously she managed entertainment and games at AdMob and continued to work with both console and mobile game developers once the company was acquired by Google.

Gabriel Leydon CEO, Co-Founder Machine Zone, Inc. @MachineZone @GLeydon Gabriel “Gabe” Leydon is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Machine Zone, Inc., a high growth, free to play, mobile, social gaming company. Under Gabriel’s leadership Machine Zone has created top-grossing hits such as iMob, iMob2, Original Gangstaz, and Global War for Apple iOS devices. Gabriel launched Machine Zone in September 2007 and joined Y Combinator in Winter 2008. Gabriel has profitably grown Machine Zone’s topline to create one of the most successful companies in the mobile games space. Most recently, Gabe guided the company to an $8 million investment from Menlo Ventures, and social games pioneer Shervin Pishevar joined Machine Zone’s board of directors. Gabe has previous expertise in arcade and game design, and social app development. His team intimately understands the perfect recipe for free-to-play mobile success - game design, virtual currency and social engagement. The company is fast becoming the leader among free-to-play mobile games for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Gabe has been quoted on a variety of topics, including free-to-play, developing on mobile, costs of mobile user acquisition, mobile vs console, and others in many top publications such as Wired, Venturebeat, Techcrunch, 148apps, PocketGamer, GamesIndustry.biz, Gamasutra, Kotaku and others.

Tommy Palm Mobile Guru King.com With over two decades of experience as a game designer and entrepreneur, Tommy Palm has earned the title “Mobile Guru” at leading casual social games company, King.com. He works in the forefront of the company’s prevalent cross-platform games initiatives taking games from social to mobile. Tommy started programming games for Commodore 64 back in 1986 as a hobby until 1999, when he founded Jadestone. Since then he has been working as concept creator and game designer on more than 10 game titles including Championship Manager Online, World in War, Karlsson på Taket (mobile), Dirk Dagger and Kodo. During the more than 10 years developing mobile games, his team has been awarded nine international awards and numerous nominations – most recently the prominent IMGA and IGF Mobile awards. In 2009 Jadestone’s mobile department spawned off into Fabrication Games, where Tommy was President. The company went on to be acquired by King.com in early 2012. Tommy is a regular collegiate lecturer and frequently contributes articles on trends in social and mobile games. He has also spoken at prominent events including GDC San Francisco, GDC Online, GDC Europe, Game Connection, E3, and Cannes Film Festival among others.

Branimir Parashkevov Head of Business Development Fortumo Branimir is Head of Business Development at Fortumo - the global provider of web and in-app mobile payments. For over 4 years he has been helping social and mobile games developers maximize their revenues through mobile billing. Working on a daily basis with international companies, Branimir can help you get your Android/iOS app or browser game to a success in more than 60 markets . Branimir holds university degrees in Business Administration and Computer science.

Laurens Rutten Founder and CEO BoosterMedia @twitlau Prior to starting BoosterMedia, Laurens successfully co-founded several mobile ventures. With a long-standing background in the mobile media and entertainment industry since 2000, Laurens now primarily focuses on sales and business development, strategy and investor relations.

Robert Schneider Head of European Operations TrialPay @TrialPay

Robert Schneider is the head of European operations at TrialPay, where he has built and managed the office in Berlin, Germany since 2012. His mission is to extend TrialPay's industry-leading solutions in transactional advertising to European markets and grow the client base of advertisers and publishers. Robert was previously a senior business development director at zanox, Europe's leading performance advertising network, where he managed a sales matrix organization across ten markets. Robert's areas of expertise are performance-based publisher business models and the development of sustainable and scalable partnerships with advertisers.

Wolfgang Stindl Business Development Director iVentureCapital GmbH @iVC_GmbH

Wolfgang is Business Development Director at iVentureCapital GmbH, a VC company uniquely focused on the Games industry. He is particularly knowledgeable on issues of monetization and f2p game design. Previously he held positions at Erste Bank and SAS, where he gained substantial insight into Data Mining and “Big Data” issues. He holds a degree from Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration and Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Bret Terrill Blogger and Consultant Bret on Social Games Bret is a pioneer in social gaming, founding one of the first social gaming companies in early 2007 with a focus on real-time multiplayer games. It failed. He took those lessons and shared them via a blog and became the first social gaming industry analyst. He took that expertise to Zynga, joining in 2008 as Director of Business Development and then transitioning to Senior Director of Corporate Development. He now consults for companies applying social game mechanics to non-gaming verticals.

Brian Wane CEO and Founder SMERC Game Cloud Network @SMERC_Design Brian is an entrepreneur and game designer who has been developing games since 1996. In 2000 he founded SMERC, an award winning mobile and social game design studio located in Brooklyn. SMERC has created a portfolio of 175+games that have been played over 300 million times. Their clients include Nickelodeon, MTV, VHA, Cartoon Network, DreamWorks, Atari, Discovery and more. SMERC has become an industry leader in creating vibrant, provocative experiences that captivate and consume a player’s attention. Brian is guiding SMERC as they forge a new approach to the way people are entertained across all the places and devices they play. This year Brian founded Game Cloud Network, a software platform company enabling social game mechanics for all interactive experiences. When Brian is not making games he enjoys roller coasters, swimming with dolphins and fine, fine art. Follow SMERC on twitter @SMERC_Design and Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/smercgames.

James Whitmarsh Product Manager for Mobile Turner Broadcasting @giantanteater James is responsible for taking Turner's entertainment channels onto mobile in the EMEA region. This includes mobile TV, personalization and VOD services, but primarily apps. Since late 2009 he has produced and published about 20 apps, primarily for iOS but also Android, Blackberry and Nokia. These include casual games, video (live TV via in app subscription, catch up TV and clips), TV channel support and general entertainment apps. Alongside production & publishing, he also takes responsibility for developer relationships, legal, marketing, maintenance & metrics. James has had great experience with different platforms, launch plans, and pricing models; most of Turner’s apps see a very quick ROI. Turner’s download & revenue figures are impressive and growing fast.

STEWART QUEALY Director of Content, Events/Conferences WebMediaBrands @StewQ Stewart joined the Mediabistro team in 2010 and currently curates the live events and conferences. Previously, he played a leadership role in running the Search Engine Strategies (SES) events as part of the original content team at Incisive Media. Prior to that, Stewart worked with Jupitermedia and was responsible for launching emerging technology and interactive marketing events such as the Jupiter/IAB Advertising Forum, Plug.IN, Game Market Watch, Enterprise Linux Forum and ClickZ Online Video Advertising Forum. Stewart has also worked closely with the open source Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF), and the Object Management Group (OMG).