3:30 PM – 5: 00 PM
The University Project Workshop
Envisioning the Future of Digital Entertainment – As a Student Curriculum, as a Cultural Prototype and as a Digital Lifestyle
Tim Langdell, Information Technology Program, USC - langdell@usc.edu
Kevin Roebuck, Manager, Libraries and e-Learning, Sun Microsystems
Philip Cruver, President/CEO, Kidz Online
Dave Bossert, Creative Director, Disney Animation Special Projects
Rajit Gadh, Director, UCLA's Wireless Internet for the Mobile Enterprise Consortium
Jenny Fulle, Executive Vice President of Production and Executive Producer, Sony Pictures Imageworks
Todd Richmond, Managing Director, Annenberg School for Communication, Moderator
DAVID A. BOSSERT received a B.F.A. in Animation from CalArts’ School of Film/Video in 1983. Mr. Bossert has been with the Walt Disney Company for more than 22 years and currently serves as Creative Director at Disney Animation Special Projects. He has worked on such films as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, Pocahontas, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, Hercules, the Academy Award-nominated Runaway Brain, and Fantasia 2000 for which he served as Artistic Coordinator and Visual Effects Supervisor. Dave served as Associate Producer on the award winning and Academy Award-nominated short Destino. He also has served as the Artistic Coordinator and Visual Effects Supervisor on the award winning and Academy Award-nominated short Lorenzo. Mr. Bossert was Producer for Walt Disney on the Front Lines a DVD compilation of films produced by the studio during W.W. II. The DVD was released on May 18, 2004 and won numerous awards including a Special Achievement Award from ASIFA-Hollywood. Currently, David is producing a three volume DVD collection of the award winning True Life Adventure films. He is also the Artistic Supervisor for the Disney Restoration Team and has overseen restoration on many of the Disney animated shorts and the recently restored features Bambi, Cinderella and Lady and the Tramp. David has directed the short film The Cat That Looked at a King for the 40th Anniversary of Mary Poppins DVD release. He is currently directing four Winnie-the-Pooh Learning Adventure educational projects for Disney’s Buena Vista Home Entertainment division as well as overseeing numerous other projects for various divisions of The Walt Disney Company. Mr. Bossert resides in Los Angeles with his wife Nancy and two daughters, Sydney and Marlee.
Tim Langdell, Professor, Information Technology Program, Viterbi School of Engineering, USC: Tim is one of the early founders of the computer and video game industry: in the late 70s he formed EDGE which became one of the top five European games companies. Through joint ventures that EDGE entered into, Tim was effective head of Electronic Arts Europe and Sega Europe. EDGE is best known these days as the top selling games magazine in Europe (soon to be released in the US). While at EDGE Tim produced more than 180 award winning games. Tim first joined the faculty at USC in the early 1990s when, at the USC Film School, he devised and taught the first interactive/games course (which later became a key course in the Interactive Masters). But for several years now, Tim has been on faculty at the Viterbi School of Engineering where he has focused on building ITP's games program. Tim is an author of 3 books on games programming, 1 on virtual reality,has just completed a co-written book on game testing (Game Testing All In One, Thomson, Feb 2005), and has one on Games Curriiculum coming soon. Tim has appeared on TV in such shows as G4/ Tech TV. and he is also an active member of BAFTA/LA (British Academy of Film & Television) of which he was a Director. He is also a member of the Writer's Guild of America and was co-founder of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.
Kevin Roebuck, Manager, Libraries and e-Learning, Sun Microsystems: Mr. Roebuck joined Sun in 1984 working in operations and production of the Sun-2 and Sun-3 product lines. After returning to complete his undergraduate studies in Industrial Technology at California Polytechnic State University, Mr. Roebuck joined the Intercontinental operations group at Sun responsible for market development with the University and Research markets in Latin America, Asia, Russia and East Europe, Middle East and Africa. Mr. Roebuck's primary focus was the establishment of SunSITE World Wide Web servers at strategic Computer science centers in these regions. Mr. Roebuck now manages the Asia-Pacific region for a new group at Sun called developer.com who's primary focus is incubating startup.com, Independent Software Vendor and Content Provider companies whose technologies and services are based on the Sun platform.
Philip Cruver is currently President and CEO of Kidz Online, a non-profi
t high-tech digital video production and distribution organization with unique and robust online training specialties that span the globe. Headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, with its principal digital studio in Los Angeles, California, Kidz Online is a provider of comprehensive online communications and training services for global youth, the federal government, and commercial customers. Kidz Online has five for-profit subsidiaries operating under its KZO brand that produce and distribute media-rich content over its optical network supporting up to 26,000 simultaneous broadband video streams. Prior to Kidz Online, Phil was the founder of three start-up companies in the transportation, wind energy, and petroleum industries and has served as CEO of two public companies. He has written over 70 articles published in national magazines and trade journals on the subject of emerging technologies and is the holder of two patents granted by the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office.Todd Richmond, Ph.D., Managing Director USC Annenberg Center fo
r Communication: One of the greatest challenges to successfully navigating in today's information-rich environment is the ability to understand not only the nuts and bolts of technology, but also to be able to step back and see a master plan. As a scientist, technologist, teacher and musician, Annenberg Center for Communication Managing Director Todd Richmond does both, applying his diverse background to a broad scope of topics that range from investigating applications and the impact of digital technologies in society, to mapping research and expertise at USC, to building platforms for collaboration. "Regardless of whether it's looking at enzyme mechanisms or learning what's at the heart of a particular software system, I believe you need to understand what makes the small things tick before going on to offer an opinion about the larger picture," says Richmond, who holds a doctorate in chemistry from Caltech.As managing director of the Annenberg Center, among Richmond's primary pursuits are researching numerous social software issues, including the use of weblogs, wikis, and BBSs in the academic space, and working in various aspects of remix culture. He blogs regularly on matters relating to digital life and mobile media, as well as music and other interests. Dave Bossert projects have included, The Black Caldron, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, Hercules, the Academy Award-nominated Runaway Brain, and Fantasia 2000 and more) participated in the restoration efforts of the BAMBI: SPECIAL EDITION DVD. Bossert also worked on the recently Oscar nominated short, LORENZO.
Dr. Rajit Gadh is a Professor at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at UCLA where he heads the Wireless Internet for Mobile Enterprise Consortium (http://winmec.ucla.edu) of which major companies including Intel, HP, Sun, Siemens, Oracle, Computer Associates, Northrop Grumman, Hughes Network Systems, Qualcomm, TCS, Satyam, ISMB-Italy and several others are supporting members. Dr. Gadh works in the areas of Mobile/Wireless Internet, multimedia/graphics, RFID-middleware, RFID-sensor interface definitions, wireless enterprise security, multi-media content distribution over the internet, and multi-media over UWB, within the Wireless Media Lab (http://wireless.ucla.edu/wml). He has over 100 papers in journals, conferences and technical magazines. He has a Doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University, a Masters from Cornell University and a Bachelors from IIT Kanpur. He has taught as a visiting researcher at UC Berkeley, has been a Assistant, Associate and Full Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and did his sabbatical as a visiting researcher at Stanford University for a year. Prior to his academic career, he has worked for two software startup companies. He has won several awards from NSF (CAREER award, Research Initiation Award, NSF-Lucent Industry Ecology Award, GOAL-I award), SAE (Ralph Teetor award), ASME (Kodak Best Technical Paper award), AT&T (Industrial ecology fellow award), Engineering Education Foundation (Research Initiation Award), etc., and other accolades in his career.