Speaker Bios

STEVE ADOLPH

Steve is a consultant with WSA Consulting Inc and has been creating software and managing software development projects for much longer than he cares to think about. He is also enrolled in the Electrical and Computer Engineering PhD program at UBC. Steve has an excellent grasp of the technology issues facing today's companies and works with them as teacher, consultant, and mentor. His software development experience includes call processing software for cellular telephone systems, railway signaling software, direct to plate systems for the graphics art industry, financial software, web based software, and e-commerce.

Steve has also led many seminars in the area of software design and has given numerous talks at software development conferences. He is co-author with Paul Bramble, Alistair Cockburn and Andy Pols of the book "Patterns for Effective Use Cases". He has also written many articles on software development and is a regular contributor to Software Development magazine.

ERIC ARMSTRONG

A Graduate of both the cell and computer animation programs of Sheridan College, Eric began his career in the late 80's working on various animated TV series.

In 1990 Eric relocated to California to work in the feature film industry for companies such as Industrial Light & Magic, Sony Pictures Imageworks and DreamWorks Feature Animation. His film credits include Jurassic Park, Jumanji, Casper, Stuart Little 1 & 2, Hollowman and Harry Potter.

In 2002 Eric was tapped by Imageworks to direct the computer animated short The ChubbsChubbs for which he received an academy award.

Eric joined Electronic Arts Canada in 2004 where he works with Next Gen Titles helping to improve character motion quality.

CHRIS BENNETT and DAVE SPRATLEY

Chris Bennett and Dave Spratley are video game and intellectual property lawyers and members of Davis & Company's Video Game Law Group. They provide a full range of legal services for clients involved in all aspects of video game development, production and distribution in Canada, Japan and the United States.

Today they will give you a general overview of intellectual capital in video games, together with a discussion of how to protect, register and enforce intellectual capital rights.

ANGELO BERALDIN

Angelo is a Senior Researcher with the National Research Council of Canada. He obtained his B.Eng. and his M.A.Sc. (Electr. Eng.) in 1984 and 1986 respectively. His research activities in digital 3D imaging have produced technologies that have been licensed and are now being commercialized in various sectors: automotive, space, cultural heritage and, entertainment. In recent years, his work and partnerships around the world in Cultural Heritage have led to the advancement of 3D documentation for museum and archaeological sites. Angelo is currently leading a Strategic Research Initiative (NRC-IIT institute-wide) aimed at the development of Cultural Heritage Applications of 3D Imaging and Modeling Technologies. He was part of the team that worked on the scientific study of the Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo which captured the attention of the world media in September 2006.

STEVE BOCSKA

Mr. Bocska has experience as a producer, game designer and manager. He also brings extensive business consulting and operations management experience as well as award-winning strategic planning skills. He has a wealth of industry experience and knowledge from working in a number of production and management roles for Disney Interactive, Black Box Games (EA) and Radical Entertainment (Vivendi Universal Games). During his MBA at the University of Victoria, he studied under Dr. Ron Mitchell and became highly versed in the New Venture Template opportunity assessment methodology. Mr. Bocska has advised and consulted for over 100 business startups, organizations, partnerships and sole proprietorships in the roles of business planner, strategic planner, market analyst and operations consultant.

ANDREW BROWNSWORD

After joining Distinctive Software, Inc. in 1990, Andrew Brownsword became part of Electronic Arts Canada when the former was acquired in 1991. For seven years he was responsible for developing core runtime libraries and tools to support multi-platform game development throughout the rapidly growing studio, now the largest studio in EA and one of the largest game development studios in the world. This work included 2D/3D graphics blitter software, serial and network communications, asynchronous file systems, threading, audio and texture authoring tools, early 3D hardware drivers, and platform support for Macintosh, Win95, 3DO, and PlayStation1. In 1998 Andrew joined the team developing the Need For Speed franchise and led the transition from C to C++ and object-oriented data-driven design. For one Need For Speed project and three products of the James Bond franchise Andrew was responsible for key core infrastructure components and overall game architecture, delivered on the PlayStation2, XBox, GameCube, and PC platforms. In 2004 he transitioned to the new EA BlackBox studio in downtown Vancouver and has been leading the internal Vanguard shared technology team. This team's core objectives are improving how game content is developed, and guiding the transition to the highly concurrent next generation PlayStation3, XBox360 and PC platforms. Andrew earned a B.Sc. in Computing Science at the University of British Columbia.

VLAD CERALDI

Mr. Ceraldi has fulfilled various roles throughout his ten year career in video games including lead programmer, technical director, producer and senior/executive producer. His games have sold over 13 million units worldwide, generating over $350 million dollars in revenue. He has worked at two of Canada's top developers-Radical Entertainment and Silicon Knights-after serving nine years as an officer in the military graduating from the Royal Military College of Canada. He has demonstrated proven leadership abilities with a history of building strong teams and producing critically acclaimed, best-selling games.

NEAL G. CLARANCE

Neal has extensive experience in the film, recording and theatre segments of the entertainment industry. He has assisted companies in the preparation of business plans, film library valuations, loan applications, financing proposals, and in raising debt and equity financing both privately and publicly. Neal has also worked closely with Canada's brokerage, financial and entertainment communities to develop structures for raising financing for the entertainment industry.

Ernst & Young provides accounting, taxation, financial and business advisory services to producers, distributors, studios, and broadcasters. Ernst & Young also assists in the financial structuring and packaging of feature films, animated productions, television series, movies and documentaries, and advises on numerous co-productions and co-ventures.

Neal has authored articles on topics ranging from preparing business plans to financing strategies for the film industry. He has participated as a speaker in many seminars and presentations and is regularly interviewed and quoted by newspapers and industry publications dealing with financing issues in the entertainment industry.

He has authored several studies and reports on the entertainment industry for government and other interest groups including reports entitled "Review of Incentives for the New Media and Animation Industries", "Opportunities for Film and Video Production and Investment in British Columbia" and "An Analysis of Existing Studio Space and Related Services and the Needs of an Expanding Industry" for the B.C. Provincial Government.

Neal has also participated in several government sponsored trade missions on behalf of the BC and Canadian Film Industries. He is a charter member and Director of the Motion Picture Production Industry Association of B.C. and Chair of the Business Development Committee, a Director and Treasurer of the Whistler International Film Festival, a member of the Film & Media Advisory Committee to the B.C. Competition council, and a member of the International Who's Who of Professionals.

JASON DELLA ROCCA

Jason is the executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), a professional society committed to advancing the careers and enhancing the lives of game developers. Jason and the IGDA focus on connecting developers with their peers, promoting professional development, and advocating on issues that affect the developer community -- such as quality of life, creative freedoms, workforce diversity and credit standards. As the spokesperson for the IGDA, Jason has appeared in countless news outlets (e.g., Wired, Nightline, LA Times, NPR, Wall Street Journal, G4, etc) and has spoken at conferences around the world (e.g., GDC, E3, TGS, SIGGRAPH, ChinaJoy, DiGRA, etc). Jason has been a member of the game development community for over a decade, and has spent time at Matrox Graphics, Quazal and Silicon Graphics.

JOHN DOYLE

Currently a Producer on EA Black Box's Need for Speed team responsible for online strategy. I've also worked at Microsoft (XSN Sports) in a variety of roles and at Wizards of the Coast (Magic: The Gathering Online.)

DAVID ELTON

David is a 13 year veteran of the video games industry spanning 4 generations of console development. David has spent the majority of his career with Electronic Arts, where he has worked on the Need For Speed franchise, the SSX franchise and numerous other titles. He has also worked with ReadySoft Inc. and Acclaim Entertainment as project manager and designer and with Microsoft Game Studios as a Business Development Manager, finding the next big hits for Xbox 360 and the PC.

David has experience in a number of capacities including Producer, Project Manager, Development Director, Business Development Manager and currently as the Senior Designer for the Need For Speed franchise.

GENE ENDRODY

Gene Endrody has worked in computer graphics, digital media and gaming for over twenty years. As the CEO and founder of Maid Marian Entertainment Inc., Gene produces massively multiplayer 3D web-games for the MaidMarian.com online games portal. Nominated for a People's Choice Award at UCON2001, MaidMarian.com currently attracts over 1.3 million unique users monthly and hosts over 4000 simultaneous players during peak timers. Prior to Maid Marian, Gene worked on a wide variety of console games as Technical Art Director at Radical Entertainment and as Program Manager for Digital Animation at BCIT's New Media Center of Excellence.

DAN IRISH

While most kids at age 13 play video games after school, Dan was busy taking college night courses, arming himself with skills to make those games. From a young age, Dan has been passionately involved in the video game industry. He's held various positions with leading edge software publishers and developers such as Spectrum HoloByte, Rocket Science Games, SegaSoft, Mattel Interactive, The Learning Company, UbiSoft Entertainment, and the award-winning Relic Entertainment.

As a successful consultant, he has worked with clients in the entertainment software industry such as Dreamworks Interactive, Evans & Sutherland, and Auran Pty Games Ltd. An accomplished writer, he has authored several game industry books with publishers Sybex, Inc., and Prima Games, a division of Random House. His most recent book is the Game Producer's Handbook published by Thomson Course Technology, which as rated “5 out of 5 starts” and Gamasutra.com confirmed in their review: “If there were a Hitchhiker's Guide to game production, this would be it!”

Under his vision and leadership as Executive Producer of Relic Entertainment, he was responsible for the highly successful Homeworld 2, which was nominated for several industry awards including Best RTS Game at E3 2003. Prior to that, Dan directed the Myst/Riven franchise. This included Myst III: Exile, realMyst, and Myst Masterpiece. Myst III: Exile was nominated for several AIAS (Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences) awards including Best Original Story, Best Original Music Score and Best Adventure Game.

Dan remains committed to production excellence in the advancement and improvement of innovative entertainment software, with a long-term aspiration of keeping Threewave an industry leader.

MARK JAMES

Mark James is a technical director at Radical Entertainment. He got his start in games due to a clerical error, and has been in the industry for 11 years. His experience with multi-processing architectures began with the Sega Saturn. Several games consoles since the Saturn have had multiple processors or have supported some form of multi-threading and Mark has worked on games for many of those systems.

As part of Radical's Advanced Technologies Group, Mark is working on the next generation of consoles.

CLAY JENSEN

Clay currently finds himself eyeball-deep in design as part of EA's Need For Speed team. The odd and eclectic background that qualifies him for this unique role includes a previous role as a Creative Director with EA Sports, and a previous life in interactive design as a Creative Director for Agency.Com and Red Sky Interactive developing award-winning experiences for the likes of Miller Brewing, Sony Pictures, Coca Cola, Nike, Sutter Home Wines, Visa, and British Telecom. He also has a degree in Advertising Design from the Art Center College of Design and cannot park his car in his garage due to the gargantuan proportions of his game collection.

PHILIPPE KRUCHTEN

Philippe Kruchten is professor of software engineering in the department of electrical and computer engineering of the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada. He joined UBC in 2004 after a 30+ year career in industry, where he worked mostly in with large software-intensive systems design, in the domains of telecommunication, defense, aerospace and transportation. Some of his experience is embodied in the Rational Unified Process (RUP) whose development he directed from 1995 till 2003, when Rational Software was bought by IBM. RUP includes an architectural design method, known as “RUP 4+1 views”. His current research interests still reside mostly with software architecture, and in particular architectural decisions and the decision process, as well as software engineering processes, in particular the application of agile processes in large and globally distributed teams. He is a senior member of IEEE Computer Society, the founder of Agile Vancouver, and a Professional Engineer in BC.

HELMUT KUNGL

Helmut Kungl is the CEO and co-founder of XYZ RGB Inc. A service bureau built on providing the highest quality of 3D related scan data for applications in visual effects, gaming and entertainment. He has a Bachelor of Industrial Design from Carleton University and his company was nominated in 2004 for an Academy "technical achievement award" for their role on such blockbuster films as; The Matrix trilogy, Lord of the Rings "The Return of the King" and King Kong.

RON MORAVEK

Ron Moravek joined EA Canada in September 2006 as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.

Moravek came to EA after nine years with Vancouver-based Relic Entertainment (now THQ Canada), most recently as General Manager Relic Entertainment and Vice President of Product Development THQ. Under Moravek's leadership, Relic published many strong titles and grew into a very well-respected development studio, resulting in their acquisition by THQ in 2004. Relic was responsible for producing THQ's first Xbox 360 title, The Outfit, which shipped in March 2006. Other titles that Moravek helped bring to market include Homeworld, Dawn of War, and, most recently, Company of Heroes.

Moravek moved to Vancouver in 1990. He and wife, Paige, have three boys.

DANIELLE MICHAEL

Danielle Michael buys and sells businesses in new media and high tech with Pacific Mergers and Acquisitions. She has more than 10 years' experience in the video-game industry. Danielle is best known for her work on the acquisition of Radical Entertainment by Vivendi Universal Games, and for negotiating game-development contracts including Simpsons Hit & Run with Fox Interactive, The Hulk and Scarface with VUG, CSI with Ubisoft and Tetris with Microsoft. In 2006 she created and launched Telefilm Canada's Great Canadian Video Game Competition, a $2-million fund to ignite original-content development by Canadian game companies. Danielle is also vice-chair of Special Olympics British Columbia.

MARK NETTER

Mark brings with him a broad range of entertainment experience, from production to marketing. As Director of Business Development for Los Angeles-based Deadline Advertising, his clients included Disney Online, Buena Vista Pictures Marketing, New Line Cinema, Vivendi Games, Mattel Online, Universal Pictures, VH1, CBS Daytime, SOAPnet, Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Mark's work in games includes Director of Product Development for Blue Planet Software, overseeing videogame development for the Tetris license among other titles. He assisted producers and directors on feature films for 20th Century Fox, New Line and USA Films. In television he served as Music Supervisor on Olympics broadcasts for each of the three major networks, ABC, CBS and NBC.

Mark is a graduate of Brown University with an Honors degree in Semiotics, and earned an MFA in Film & Television Production at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

His "Politi-Flicks" column, covering and commenting on the intersection of Internet video and politics, can be read weekly at www.thedailyreel.com.

DUANE NICKULL

As Senior Technical Evangelist for Adobe Systems, Duane Nickull is responsible for Adobe's messaging around enterprise solutions in the SOA and Web Services spaces plus other forward looking aspects such as the Web 2.0. Previously Mr. Nickull co-founded Yellow Dragon Software Corporation, a privately held developer of XML messaging and metadata management software, acquired by Adobe in 2003. He previously served as CTO and President of XML Global Technologies, a publicly traded company acquired by Xenos Group in early 2003.

Mr. Nickull has written or participated in most of the larger SOA standards work in the past decade. He currently chairs the OASIS Service Oriented Architecture Reference Model Technical Committee (SOA-RM TC) which has just delivered a Reference Model for Service Oriented Architecture as a full OASIS standard. He served as a Vice Chair of the United Nations Centre for Facilitation of Commerce and Trade (UN/CEFACT) between 2003 and 2006. Within the United Nations, he oversaw the UN's Electronic Business strategy and Service Oriented Architecture and modeling efforts. He has served as the project team lead of the United Nations (UN/CEFACT) Electronic Business Architecture Group (SOA) and a specially appointed liaison between the W3C, UN and OASIS standards consortiums. Additionally, Duane has served as the chair and lead system architect for the United Nation's Electronic Business Working Group, a direct sub-group of CEFACT TMG and on the CEFACT TMG Steering Committee. He also has served as the Co-chair of the ebXML Technical Architecture group as well as co-editor of that specification starting in 1999, largely recognized as the first post-internet and post XML SOA. He has participated in writing many of the recent large Service Oriented Architectures that permeate the IT landscape today such as the W3C Web Services Architecture and also co wrote the Mackenzie-Nickull Meta-model for Architectural Patterns. Mr. Nickull has written and contributed many technical articles and books on these subjects.

Mr. Nickull has been called Mr. SOA by his peers during introductions to speak on the subject due to his overwhelming experience writing and contributing to the major Service Oriented Architectures (SOA's). Between 1995 and 2006, he spoke at over 500 venues in various countries around the world Duane has recently renewed his work in the theoretical field of computational intelligence and has recently spoken several times to various audiences via the Ontolog Forum on eventcausality aware inference engines coupled to a query-able ontology. Such mechanisms may one day bestow true cognitive and reasoning capabilities upon applications. In the field of semantic reconciliation, Duane was a co-inventor of the first Context-sensitive XML Search Engine (www.goxml.com) and the first web based XML E-Commerce ASP. He is named on pending patents pertaining to XML indexing and retrieval covering 51 unique points. He also served as Technical Director for XSLT.com during the 1990's until as recently as 2002.

He lives in Vancouver, Canada with his wife and three children, plays in a rock band, actively snowboards, races Porsche 911's and mountain bikes. Duane first came to Vancouver playing in an original band in 1985 and made his living as a professional musician for several years.<./p>

LEAH RUBIN

Leah Rubin, Vice President of Human Resources, is responsible for shaping Radical Entertainment's award-winning work environment. Since joining Radical in 2000, Leah has overseen the attraction, retention and development of staff in an industry where success wholly depends on great talent. Leah also provides direction and leadership support for all of Radical's HR and employment practice matters. Leah's significant HR management experience includes senior positions at the Metropolitan Hotel and Coast Capital Credit Union. Her academic background includes a Bachelor of Arts from the University of B.C., a Management of Human Resources diploma from the B.C. Institute of Technology and an HR Graduate Certificate from Royal Roads University. Under her leadership, Radical Entertainment has won several employer-of-choice awards, including Maclean's "Canada's Top 100 Employers" and BC Business magazine's "Best places to work in B.C." Radical's HR Department was a nominee in this year's "Award of Excellence" as determined by the Human Resources Management Association.

ALAN SNODGRASS

As President of Exent, Alan Snodgrass oversees Exent’s global business activities from the company’s North American headquarters.

A 15 year industry veteran, Snodgrass spent more than 12 years with Intel before joining Exent in 2006. Most recently, he established the business development organization for Intel’s Digital Home Group where he and his team executed strategic business deals in support of the organization’s consumer electronics and PCs platforms businesses. Alan has held numerous roles in business development and finance in his years spent at Intel.

Alan has a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from Pomona College and a M.B.A in Finance from University of California, Berkeley.

MIKE SWANSON

Mike Swanson has been in the games industry for 18 years. Starting as an artist on a Laserdisc, touch-screen golf simulation Machine Company called Joytec in Vancouver back in 1989. Mike joined Electronic Arts Canada in 1991 as an artist and went on to work on many titles including FIFA Soccer, Triple Play Baseball and SSX. In 2001 Mike moved to San Francisco to work at Lucasarts Entertainment as their Manager of Technical Art. Mike is currently working at Gas Powered Games in Redmond, Washington as the Studio Art Production Manager.

GARY TOSTE

Gary Toste brings 15 years of extensive technical and business expertise to his role as SVP Product and Customer Delivery at Tira Wireless. In this role, he is responsible for driving all aspects of innovation for the Jump Services and Products (Research & Development) organizations, including deployment, application integration and licensing. Gary offers a unique combination of development and product management expertise in managing all aspects of the product lifecycle for enterprise applications and mobile platforms.

Gary joined Tira Wireless as General Manager of Tira Studios, following the acquisition of Appligo in 2003 (Tira Studios was sold to Airborne Entertainment in 2004). At Appligo, Gary was responsible for all R&D and product marketing efforts for J2ME and BREW wireless applications. Previously, Gary led development and product marketing initiatives for a number of companies, including Broadbase Communications, Delrina, Symantec, Balisoft and Jetform Corporation.

Gary has spoken extensively at venues throughout North America on product lifecycle management and building market driven products that bridge the gap between providers and customers. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto.

YOAV TZRUYA

As the COO of Exent Technologies, Yoav Tzruya has more than 15 years of experience in software development, marketing and business development. He is a recognized industry expert in the fields of in-game advertising and digital distribution of entertainment content. Yoav is responsible for Exent’s global operations including marketing, R&D, professional services and new business development. He has spoken at nearly every major industry event including CES, E3 and GlobalComm.

FRANK VITZ

Frank Vitz has been creating computer animation and visual effects since the 80's. He has worked in advertising where he earned several Clios and on movies including Tron, Judge Dredd, Stargate, and XMen. He has designed multi-media systems and theme park ride visuals. Currently Frank is working at Electronic Arts, applying his experience to Next Gen video games. Recent projects include concept videos, and physics based procedural animation tools designed to bring greater emotional believability to video game characters. A common theme in Frank's work is figuring out how to fit the pieces together; to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

DEAN WADSWORTH

Early in 1980 Dean expressed a strong passion to become a game programmer and began a long career in this industry that has continued since then. His experience has been in high end database creation for multinational organizations that must be stable, fast and nimble. Dean has brought these powerful tools to the gaming industry to create products that revolutionize this sector.

Dean has over 25 years programming experience with 10 years network programming and design experience. In 1996 Dean got his first programming break at Datawave Vending. There he helped to develop and code his first payment gateway transaction processing system. This system took requests from machines over X25 wireless, dialup modem and frame relay. Responsible for validating the data and processing the requests, he was also provided the reporting system showing the overall system operation and cash flow. After leaving Datawave Vending Dean continued to do private contracting for the owners of this company and they subsequently assisted in helping him set up his own consulting and programming company “Tomorrow's Internet Revolution”. From this work he was introduced to Companies such as WSI, Market News, Dunhill Capital and IPO Capital and acted as a consultant on technical ventures.

DAVE WARFIELD

After 4 years in computer and game retail with Compucentre, then starting in 1990 with Distinctive Software, and moving through the ranks of EA Canada as a designer to a senior Producer had Dave involved in the full gamut of game design, which allowed him to create and run a new Game Design program with VFS, and return his skills to the next generation of game designers.

His experience with Game Design and documentation, project planning, competitive analysis, sound design, quality assurance, legal issues, and developing working relationships with leagues and players gave him the perspective needed to direct the multidisciplinary VFS Game Design program.

TARRNIE WILLIAMS

Tarrnie has always been passionate about games. He made his first board game at 6, first war game at 8, and wrote his first computer game design at 10. Tarrnie joined Relic Entertainment (THQ Canada Inc.) in July 2005, and is currently overseeing development on multiple innovative projects as the General Manager. Previous postings over the past 17 years have included stints at Distinctive Software, EA Canada and EA Los Angeles. During this time, Tarrnie has had the honor of working with and leading teams of various sizes, from as small as 3 to as large as 170, and together they have helped create and build many successful products and franchises including Need for Speed, NBA Live, Medal of Honor, Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. He believes in the power of creative people, passion, communication, collaboration, fun, and knows that work/life balance in the games industry is a reality, not just a dream. He enjoys life on the North Shore with his wife Shannon, and his two children, Griffin and Keira.