Social Gaming Summit 2010

We’re continuing to confirm 2010 speakers, so watch this space - we’ll be announcing some great additions regularly. Companies interested in speaking at the Social Gaming Summit 2010 should contact Charles Hudson via email at charles@socialgamingsummit.com.

ANDREW BUSEY is the founder and CEO of Challenge Games, a new online gaming company creating exciting and challenging short-form games that don’t require huge time commitments to play and enjoy. Over the past 15 years, Andrew has pioneered some of the industry’s most important web technologies - including work on Mosaic, the first web browser (now part of Microsoft Internet Explorer); creating iChat, one of the first instant messaging applications; and building WebCenter, the first major web-based customer service technology (now part of Avaya). He most recently co-founded Pluck which enables social media on major sites such as TheStreet.com, USA Today, and Reuters. But his passion has always been gaming. In 2006 Andrew decided the time was right to pursue his dream and Challenge Games was born. Challenge Games launched their first game Duels in August 2007.  

Twiter: @andrewbusey

JIM GREER founded a casual gaming startup in May 2006. Jim has extensive experience in PC and web game development. His most recent experience was at Pogo.com where he worked until May 2006. Pogo is Electronic Arts' casual games brand. Club Pogo has over 1.2 million subscribers, plus a host of fun community features like challenges and collectible badges.

Twitter: @jimgreer

DAVID KAYE is the Vice President of Business Development at Meteor Games, where his job is to figure out ways for the company to grow its audience and make more money. He was responsible for coming up with the concept behind the company’s hit game Island Paradise¸ which was the first title in the now burgeoning “island game” category. David has been making games since high school, where he co-founded the first company in the United States to pioneer the sale of virtual goods, text MMO publisher Iron Realms Entertainment. He holds a BA (Hons) in English Language and Literature from Oxford University.

Twitter: @davidkaye

KEITH LEE is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Booyah, Inc. Mr. Lee has a proven track record in the interactive entertainment industry. From 2002 to 2005, Mr. Lee served as Lead Programmer and Project Manager at Insomniac Games. In 2006 he transitioned to be Lead Producer at Blizzard Entertainment. Prior to entering the gaming industry, Mr. Lee worked at several investment banks, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Mr. Lee graduated with a BS in Computer Science and a BA in International Relations and Economics from Stanford University.

Twitter: @keithlee0

GARRETT LINK is General Manager of GameHouse Studios, a wholly owned subsidiary of Real Networks since 2003. Under his leadership, the GameHouse Studios team of designers, artists and engineers publish 8-12 titles per year. GameHouse has over 50 original titles to its credit including hits such as Text Twist, Little Shop of Treasures and the Zeeby Award winner Super Collapse III. Garrett's whole process expertise in casual gaming began well before games were designated as casual. Prior to joining Real Networks, he designed games for Sony Online Entertainment and produced, designed and managed QA for Humongous Entertainment. Garrett's successes include building the GameHouse subscription service and receiving the 2007 Innovation Award for his achievements in In-Game Streaming Advertising.

MITALI PATTNAIK is the General Manager of Social Games at PlayFirst, Inc., where she is responsible for bringing the company’s award-winning products to the social gaming arena. Before joining PlayFirst, Ms. Pattnaik held various executive positions at Electronic Arts, including leading marketing and monetization efforts for social games, online marketing efforts for the launch of The Sims™ 3, and introducing a virtual goods business model for The Sims games with the launch of The Sims™ 3 Store. Prior to her time at EA, Ms. Pattnaik served as Senior Marketing Manager at Yahoo!, where she led the successful launch of Yahoo! Video. 

Twitter: @mitali

JOHN PLEASANTS is CEO of Playdom, a leading social games developer for Facebook, MySpace and hi5. Most recently, he served as President of Publishing and Chief Operating Officer of Electronic Arts (EA), where he oversaw global operations for the $4+ billion gaming company and led its consumer-facing businesses, including EA Mobile, Pogo, EA.com, global online gaming and Rupture.

Twitter: @Playdom

CHRISTA QUARLES oversees Playdom's financial management and forecasting, and helps drive the company's strategic planning. Christa comes to Playdom from Thomas Weisel Partners, where she served as managing director for four years and a senior equity research analyst for almost a decade. In 2009, while covering market leaders from Google to Yahoo, Financial Times ranked Christa the #1 Internet software and services analyst for earnings estimates in the United States. Prior to joining Thomas Weisel, Christa held an assistant vice president position at Merrill Lynch. Christa graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Carnegie Mellon with degrees in economics and German, and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. Much like her Wild Ones character, Christa always hits her targets.

Twitter: @cquarles

KEITH RABOIS leads business development and strategy for Slide. Prior to Slide, Keith ran business development and advertising sales for LinkedIn. Earlier in his career, Keith served as Executive Vice President of Business Development and Policy for PayPal. He is currently serving on the Board of Directors of Yelp and Xoom, and was an early investor in YouTube and LinkedIn. Keith is the only person who owns equity in every VC-financed consumer Internet company founded by former PayPal employees. He is also a Sequoia Technology Partner at Sequoia Capital.

Twitter: @rabois

DENNIS RYAN is EVP, Worldwide Business Development for PopCap. Dennis joined PopCap in late 2005 and is responsible for PopCap’s business development efforts worldwide. In this role, he oversees sales, licensing and partnerships that optimize the market impact of the company’s products across all platforms, channels and territories. Prior to PopCap, Dennis held General Manager and Vice President positions at publicly-traded Click Commerce, Inc., where he ran a profitable business unit for market-leading collaborative commerce software. Previously, he was CEO of Allegis Corporation for five years when it pioneered on-demand delivery of channel management software. He was also CEO at Net-It Software, which developed intranet document management software, and Vice President at EO, Inc, which created early smartphone devices for AT&T. In 1987, Dennis was a founding team member of Claris Corporation (now FileMaker, Inc.) where he was group manager for information management products, including the ever-popular FileMaker database product line. Dennis started his career in product management and engineering at Apple Computer and IBM.

 

SEAN RYAN - Innovative prepaid card provider Zeus Research was founded by Sean Ryan, a digital media veteran who previously co-founded profitable virtual world site Meez, virtual goods platform TwoFish (sold to Live Gamer) and online karaoke site SingShot (sold to Electronic Arts).  Prior to those companies, Sean was the CEO of Listen.com, the company behind the award-winning Rhapsody music service, and worked in various roles at Sega of America and its online division, SegaSoft Networks.   Sean holds an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School and BA from Columbia University.

DANNY SHADER is the CEO of Kwedit. Prior to Kwedit, Mr. Shader was CEO of Jasper Wireless and the Corporate VP of Motorola which acquired his former company, Good Technology. Prior to Good Technology, Mr. Shader served as a Vice President and General Manager at Amazon.com, which he joined upon the company’s acquisition of Accept.com, a company he co-founded and led as CEO. Accept.com was the first consumer-to-consumer, Internet-based, payment services provider.

JIA SHEN is the Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of RockYou, and has focused extensively on graphic design and usability throughout his professional web development career spanning over 10 years. Prior to RockYou, Jia has held management roles leading the user interface and technical solutions teams at Open Harbor, and managing the majority of engineering at Iconix. Jia started working on scalable consumer applications at shopping tools internet provider Bluedog, a Stanford based startup, and was part of the original team at Bell Laboratories which developed the VoiceXML format into the W3C standard. In addition, Jia's experience has spanned enterprise sales and professional services functions, as he closed transactions and integrated with large multi-national corporation customers like Mitsubishi, Tyco, Flextronics, and DHL. Jia has a double major in Computer Science and Computer Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

Twitter: @mekatek

TED SOROM is CEO of Rixty, an innovative youth-controlled cash-based payment system that allows youth to pay for online entertainment offerings as easily as buying at the store down the street. As entertainment has moved online, the teen population has followed, but insufficient payment system evolution has limited their online spending. Rixty was founded to empower youth online spending giving them a true Web 2.0 way to engage with their entertainment dollars. In creating Rixty, Ted leveraged his years of executive experience in high-tech product development and his experience developing cutting edge toys and consumer products for Target, Gap Kids and Dreamworks.

Twitter: @tsorom

KAVIN STEWART is co-founder and CEO of LOLapps. He has led the company from its founding to a base of over 40 million monthly unique visitors across various social networks. Kavin graduated from Berkeley's school of engineering with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. While he feverishly dreamed of becoming a game programmer the way most little boys dream of becoming an astronaut or racecar driver, his first job post-college turned out to be coding Java installers, which is just as exciting as it sounds. From there he held a wide range of programming and product management roles, most recently including PM at Offermatica (acquired by Omniture).

 

GREG THOMSON is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tall Tree Games. With offices in Ontario Canada, Tall Tree Games is the developer of Fish World and other social games that are played by over 15 million users monthly. Greg has been developing for the Facebook platform since it first opened in May of 2007. In the last three years, he has lead the development and release of more than 20 Facebook applications that have each reached over 1 million users. In 2008, Tall Tree Games developed and released Yoville, a virtual world which was later sold to Zynga. Among Greg's many contributions to social gaming was the pioneering of offer rewards in 2007, which account for up to 60% of revenue for most social games.

Twitter: @talltreegames

JOSH WILLIAMS is Co-Founder and CEO of Gowalla, a locative social network inspiring people to share their favorite places and experiences with friends. With an ever growing collection of game-like rewards, the beautifully designed service has connected people in 150 countries with over 450,000 places around the world. Josh and his team also created the landmark cult-hit social game PackRat on Facebook. Prior to Gowalla, he was Principal at Firewheel Design, a boutique user-interface consultancy, where his clients included Microsoft, Samsung, Hewlett Packard, Thompson Reuters and Causes. At Firewheel, he was also responsible for the launch of IconBuffet and invoicing service Blinksale. Josh never went to school. He loves mid-century modern design, architecture, snowboarding and longboarding. He lives in Austin with his wife Rachel and two effervescent daughters. In a future life, he’d like to be an accomplished woodworker.

Twitter: @jw

SEASON XU is Co-Founder and COO of Five Minutes, Inc., a leading social game developing and publishing company based in Shanghai. Prior to starting Five Minutes, Season co-founded Inu Interactive, Inc., a web application outsourcing company in 2006. He studied entrepreneurship in USC for his undergraduate degree. Five Minutes is the original creator of Happy Farm, the biggest social game of Asia in 2009. The success of Happy Farm is phenomenal. It has generated over tens of millions users on Asian SNS platforms. In 2009, the company received Series A funding from DFJ. Aiming to taking social game to the next level, Five Minutes recently launched Happy Farm 2 globally and expects to establish a global presence in 2010.

Twitter: @seasonxu