Volker has been at the forefront of mobile and digital media for a decade. From helping conceive the world's first mobile artist services for the likes of Britney Spears, Eve and Duran Duran, working with radio stations to use mobile as an audience activation tool to mobile games (with leading publishers Hands-On Mobile and Connect2Media where he oversaw licenses with Marvel, Hasbro, Activision, LEGO, BMW, Konami, WPT, etc.) he has been fortunate in playing a part in industry firsts.

Volker is a regular speaker at top mobile and technology conferences around the world (incl. Mobile World Congress, CTIA, Oxford University, SXSW, etc) and a speaker at and co-organiser of TEDx Youth @ Manchester. He blogs at http://vhirsch.com/blog and tweets @vhirsch..

He has written two books, notably the foundational web standards text, Designing With Web Standards 3rd Edition with Ethan Marcotte.

Jeffrey co-founded the multi-city web design conference An Event Apart with Eric Meyer, and co-founded and publishes A Book Apart, brief books for people who make websites with Mandy Brown and Jason Santa Maria. He co-hosts The Big Web Show (.net Magazine Video Podcast of the Year 2010) with Dan Benjamin, and is a faculty member on the MFA, Interaction Design program at School of Visual Arts. Jeffrey blogs at zeldman.com (since 1995) and tweets at @zeldman.

BioWare currently operates in seven locations across the world, including Edmonton (Alberta, Canada), Montreal (Quebec, Canada), Austin (Texas), Fairfax (Virginia), San Francisco (California), Los Angeles (California) and Galway (Ireland).

Aaryn brings a decade of commitment to BioWare. He began in the Edmonton studio in 2000 as a Programmer, where he contributed to Baulder's Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, and Dragon Age: Origins. While working on Dragon Age: Origins in 2007, Aaryn transitioned into Director of Programming for BioWare Edmonton. After BioWare joined the EA family, Aaryn became Studio COO, where he stayed until 2009, when he became Studio General Manager of BioWare Edmonton and BioWare Montreal.

There, he led the production team on this project and on its sequel, Mass Effect 2, both universally acclaimed games. In early 2009, then as part of the larger EA family, he managed the creation of a new BioWare studio in Montréal where he now is the Studio Director, actively working at growing a game development studio worthy of BioWare's pedigree.

There, he led the production team on this project and on its sequel, Mass Effect 2, both universally acclaimed games. In early 2009, then as part of the larger EA family, he managed the creation of a new BioWare studio in Montréal where he now is the Studio Director, actively working at growing a game development studio worthy of BioWare's pedigree.

For seven years he worked as a consultant mostly in Canada, US and UK developing a highly optimized and multithreaded database architecture and reporting system for transit operators. He is currently leading and developing the hardware accelerated Flash 3D engine at Frima Studio.

There, he led the production team on this project and on its sequel, Mass Effect 2, both universally acclaimed games. In early 2009, then as part of the larger EA family, he managed the creation of a new BioWare studio in Montréal where he now is the Studio Director, actively working at growing a game development studio worthy of BioWare's pedigree.

Her long-standing relationships with top interactive development teams and major licensors assist the company in acquiring creative and innovative brands to develop into quality interactive entertainment franchises. Yapp also directs the company's growing licensing out strategies as Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. continues to build upon the strength of its franchise brands.

Prior to joining Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc., Yapp served as vice president of licensing and business development for D3Publisher of America. Additionally, she was senior manager of licensing for THQ, Inc. and THQ Wireless, Inc., where she participated in the acquisitions of high profile brands from Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, DreamWorks, Warner Bros., Disney, Fox, Sega, Marvel, Mattel, Microsoft, and Lego. She currently serves as a board member of LIMA (Licensing Industry Merchandisers Association), the ESA (Electronic Software Association) Foundation and the Game Connection Advisory Board.

Before entering the video games industry, Yapp held marketing and producing positions in the entertainment industry. Yapp was graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a degree in English.

John was an integral member of management teams that created successful startup companies in personal communications services (PCS), short message service (SMS) distribution and mobile games/entertainment content.

He was one of the first employees of Omnipoint Communications, a pioneering company in digital mobile communications that built out digital wireless services throughout the East Coast and the Midwest. Omnipoint was sold to VoiceStream Wireless, now T-Mobile USA, in 2000.

John was also a founding member of the North American operations for I-play, a mobile games publisher that was bought by Oberon Media in 2007. John was an integral part of I-play's US operations and worked in a broad number of roles, including business development, partner relations, marketing, PR and operations. He founded I-play's iPhone and Android businesses and was a key member of the development team for the company's popular iPhone and Android games.

Currently, John is running Grotland New Media, a consultancy specializing in new media platform strategy development, marketing, process implementation and product/service management for publishers and Media content companies.

John received his Master's Degree in International Communication from The American University in Washington, DC, and his BA in both History and International Affairs from The Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.

Through effective use of technology, the company's products have reduced both operational and overhead costs and increased convenience for his business client's since 2008. Mr. Al-Tamimi has modeled a creative working environment based upon the disciplines learned as a member of the Qatar National Soccer Team. The team concept allows members to manage and shine in their roles while working together for one goal, Success!

Prior to the start-up of 3 Mushrooms, Mr Al-Tamimi lived in Doha, Qatar where he launched Baraka Media- serving advertizing needs. He also opened a very successful auto trading magazine, Sayyarty, which emphasized new technology and was a key indicator for things to come . In December 2003, Mr. Al-Tamimi received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Georgia State University. Born in Cairo, Egypt in 1980, Mr. Al-Tamimi was raised in Doha, Qatar until 1997. He moved to the United States in February 1998, but finally settled in Canada in 2005 which he considers as his home. Mr. Al-Tamimi speaks English and Arabic and enjoys playing soccer and experimenting with new technologies and brain storming new ideas with the team he has created.

The development team is led by Kyle Pearn, CTO / company co-founder and Jamie Webster, Technical Project Lead. Their combined expertise and experience has been a huge compliment to the company's success and growth.

Productizing SharePoint applications has been a core focus for Kyle and Jamie, by producing the redistributable product "Wavelength" that can be deployed as an enterprise solution as well as a SAAS solution. The Wavelength product has been built on the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Foundation platform which includes a core feature base that can be customized through feature sets enabling the application to be extended and used within a dynamic set of clients ranging from Health Care, Long Term Care, Education Facilities as well as various Government organizations.

Their experience has enabled the team to create and leverage their own unique set of tools including project methodologies within SharePoint's development platform. These tools and skills address the uncertainties when choosing SharePoint as a project destination platform in regards to development, testing, deploying as well as upgrading future features for applications."

Kelly has been running small and large scale development studios since 1994. Over his career he has been involved in over 300 shipped titles, generated billions of dollars in revenue and has managed and mentored some of the best talent in the industry. Most recently, Kelly was the President of Radical Entertainment until March 2010.

Since leaving Radical Entertainment, Kelly has been working as an Industry Advisor and Consultant while enjoying the time away from a regular office schedule.

He received a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Waterloo, but rather than venture down the traditional engineering path he made a name for himself creating shareware blockbusters like Epic Pinball.

James founded Digital Extremes in 1993 with an idea of revolutionizing the 3d gaming world with a first-person action game called Unreal. Ten years and more than 11 million units later, Epic Games Unreal franchise, including the award-winning PC series Unreal and Unreal Tournament as well as Xbox hit Unreal Championship, has helped set the standard in the first person shooter genre and Digital Extremes has become one of the foremost independent game development studios in the industry

James continues to push the technological envelope in everything Digital Extremes does and that envelope will soon open to reveal the highly anticipated new third-person action franchise, Dark Sector which will further solidify Digital Extremes brilliance in game design and technical innovation.

He is the founder of Further Ahead, a leading firm that delivers insightful and creative accessibility consulting to Fortune 500 corporations, educational institutions, public utilities, government agencies and other private sector clients. He writes about accessibility and web design at simplyaccessible.com and speaking and teaching at seizetheroom.com

Before FreshBooks he was a Program Manager at Microsoft for 7 years where he led the User Experience for Microsoft's latest cloud offering- Office 365. His favourite colour is cobalt blue, and on weekends he plays Rockabilly music and takes his kids fishing.

Putting the "Fun" in Funnel Optimization: How FreshBooks Used Gamification to Find More Paying Customers

What do casual games have in common with helping your serious software make money? How do you optimize your app for new users to make sure they come back to use it another day? We learned the hard way, so you don't have to. Casey clears up the differences and similarities between gamification, user engagement, and conversion.

Larry is a Zend-certified PHP 5 developer with a Master's degree in Computer Science from DePaul University.

I spend far too much of my waking hours working on or thinking about Drupal, Palantir-related or otherwise. I got into Drupal originally for an online Star Trek RPG club that I have been in since high school, which is now running Drupal. (Check it out at http://www.star-fleet.com/.) We've just celebrated our 20th anniversary. The rest of my life is classified.

He served as development lead on the Web sites, Customer Relationship Management forms, databases and contest administration for the Chrysler Jeep Dodge brands in Canada.

Ali's love for technology and how things work led him to iPhone application development, where he developed his first application in 2008 with this application being featured in the New York Times , a book by O'Reilly publishing, Apple themselves on numerous occasions and many web blogs.

A couple game credits to his name include the hit iPhone/iPad game Banzai Blowfish, and Speed and Strength downloaded over 400,000 times worldwide.

Prior to co-founding Red Piston, Ali had already developed 6 iPhone applications, with multiple apps being featured by Apple and in publications worldwide.

With his 5-year-old daughter Cassandra, Ryan is the co-creator of Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure, a game that has received worldwide acclaim since its launch this past May. Untold's next great games are Spellirium, and Putty Crime: on the Tail of the Foxy Badger.

His first company, founded in university, licensed his game engine and online project management system to various academic institutions across North America, including the University of California at Berkeley. As a programmer he's been developing games since the mid-90's and has worked on notable titles such as Bioshock and Dark Sector. Holding a bachelors in Computer Science and Intelligent Systems, Mark is an advocate of game development in education and has co-developed Fanshawe College's Advanced Game Programming postgraduate program.

In 2008, Mark co-founded Antic Entertainment with two other industry veterans who shared his vision of creating casual games for the hardcore player, on the web and beyond. His expertise lies in system architecture design, high scalability, technical process development and team building. He is ultimately responsible for the technical vision of Antic Entertainment, and enjoys promoting both his company and the London game industry at home and abroad.

BuzzData is a social data publishing platform that aims to bring streamlined collaborative workflow to data similar to how github did with code.

In 1994 Judith started working in film digital effects at Digital Domain where she worked in a variety of roles on a wide range of projects including "Apollo 13" (Supervising Digital Artist), "T2-3D: Battle Across Time" (3D Digital Effects Supervisor), "Titanic" Digital Effects Supervisor) and "Fight Club" (Co-Opening Sequence Team Lead).

He frequently advocates through engagement, conferences and public speaking for the use of open source technologies, such as Drupal and WordPress; and a transparent, collaborative and participatory government.

Currently residing in London, Ontario, Aaron has worked with a variety of businesses and nonprofit organizations to solve complex problems with simple strategies and solutions. From entrepreneurs and start-ups to Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft, Aaron has worked with a variety of organizations to implement these solutions that solve a specific problem, streamline business processes, prototype experimental solutions, and/or engage with a target audience through creative and interactive design.

Although she had a great passion for education, she found that programming gave her even greater professional satisfaction. In 2000, she left her teaching career to pursue a career in video game development at Sandbox Studios/Digital Illusions. During her time there, her knowledge of gaming and the industry grew as she took on the role of programmer/lead programmer on several of their hit titles.
Her versatility and continued drive for excellence led her to co-found Big Blue Bubble in 2004.
As COO, she has played a pivotal role in the growth and success of the company.

Dan Rickard is an accomplished 3d artist specializing in animation and character design who has worked on dozens of games including Batman Arkham City and Arkham Asylum, Borderlands, Army of Two 40th Day, Hulk, Wanted, Blacksite, Sacred 2, and most of the Battlefield series. Over the past 11 years Dan has worked at every artistic stage of game development with DICE Canada and has also been Art Manager and Animation Lead at Redjade. While keeping one foot in the gaming industry doing contract work, he has also stepped into the role of Professor at Fanshawe College in London Ontario. Dan teaches introductory 3d as well as Advanced 3d Animation and Character Design focusing on modeling, texturing, and animation. Dan's love of 3d art has kept him closely bound to online competitions in which he tries his best in as many as possible, always striving to hone his skill and reaching for that next level of inspiration.

With over 15 years in the Web industry, she knows how to identify and articulate profitable Web skills. Her popular books about the content management system Drupal are lauded by the community as some of the best resources for learning Drupal. As a consultant, Emma has helped dynamic Web teams improve their workflow, refine their toolkits and get more shit done faster. An avid beekeeper and Scotch drinker, Emma is no stranger to life offline, but you can find her online at @emmajanedotnet.

Dyack (B. Phed, H. B.Sc, M. Sc.) founded Silicon Knights® in 1992 after releasing Cyber Empires in 1991. Since that time, Silicon Knights has moved from creating PC games to premiere AAA console titles, such as Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain; the critically acclaimed Eternal Darkness; the popular Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, and Too Human. The company recently completed X-Men: Destiny under the Silicon Knights License Group (SKLG) brand with Activision.


Dyack is one of the creators of Eight: The Hamilton Institute for Interactive Digital Media. He is a frequent speaker at game industry and Canadian events, such as GDC, Gamescom, and DIG. In addition, Dyack is a member of the Peter Drucker Society, on the board of the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, a member of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and advises several universities and colleges, including MIT and Brock University.

Born in Croatia, he started his career in the mid 80's as a programmer creating proprietary games for the MSX and Commodore Amiga. He spent the next couple of years in broadcasting; producing and hosting a live TV show devoted to video games and computer technology.

In 1995, he started a video game magazine where he worked as the editor.

In 1999, he moved to Canada and continued his professional career as a lead programmer, first in Sandbox Studios and later in Digital Illusions Canada.

In 2004, he established Big Blue Bubble, which quickly became one of the best known and highest rated wireless and handheld game developers in North America.

A social media junkie with an unhealthy obsession for local politics, Justin recently worked on the Rocco Rossi mayoral campaign as a social media and web strategist, where he helped develop, execute and direct all online efforts. He takes his coffee with 2 sugars, likes a firm handshake and loves the feel of a freshly dry-cleaned dress shirt.

Liljegren brings more than 20 years of console and PC entertainment software development experience to Antic. His expertise in this space has brought him an understanding of the business from the corporate, publisher, developer and consumer perspectives.

Prior to Antic Entertainment, Liljegren co-founded Digital Illusions CE AB (now owned by Electronic Arts) in 1988. As CEO, he grew the company from four employees to more than 80. During his tenure, Digital Illusions successfully released over two dozen games, including Battlefield 1942®, an international hit that sold over 2.1 million copies worldwide. He also successfully led the company's private venture capital funding in 1996 and guided Digital Illusions through its initial public offering (IPO) in 1998. In 2000 Liljegren started a company in Palo Alto California named REDJADE Inc., securing $10M in initial funding for this venture to build a hand held entertainment unit for Swedish mobile company Ericsson. He successfully grew the company to 60 employees, with offices in Palo Alto and Sweden; however, at the beginning of 2001, Ericsson pulled their financing and REDJADE was closed down.

Liljegren then returned to Digital Illusions CE AB, taking a position as Studio Manager in 2001 at the companies recently acquired Canadian subsidiary CE Digital Illusions Canada, Inc. He held this position until October 2006 when he founded Redjade Inc., an Art Outsourcing company for the Interactive Entertainment industry. Liljegren still holds the position of CEO for Redjade Inc., as well as the position of CEO for Antic Entertainment.

During that time, Michael has been responsible for various business development activities including working with government and other game industry leaders to develop programs to help promote the video game industry and helping the company manage its growth and internal transformation to a "next-gen" company.

Prior to joining Digital Extremes, Michael worked as a consulting engineering for a firm he helped to establish in 1999. He is also a co-founder of the Achimota Centre for Children with Autism, a charitable organization that provides specialized treatment for autistic children.

He holds graduate degrees in engineering science, business administration and digital media. He is a Certified Management Accountant and a Licensed Professional Engineer, a member of the Game Developers Association of Ontario and a Director for Interactive Ontario. He is married to Julia and has two children, Rachel and Jacob, ages 9 and 11.

Dr. Katchabaw is involved in numerous research projects in this area, with funding support from NSERC, CITO/OCE, Heritage Canada, and a variety of industry sources. In addition, he is actively involved in teaching game development at Western, and is involved in many curriculum development efforts in this area at Western, in Canada, and internationally. Dr. Katchabaw is also a member of the ACM, IEEE, IGDA, and CGSA.