Click on the Video Below and Sample a Session from a previous Digital Hollywood event. For Additional Video Sessions, Click Here Digital Hollywood, October 27-30, 2008 Wednesday, October 29th 3:50 PM - 5:00 PM Track III: Social Media as a Content, Advertising and Commerce Platform Social networks and user generated media are not always a success. Just like any innovation, the challenge is to be among those left standing after the race to be first is over. On a certain level, the era of the social networks and user generated media sites is just beginning. The technology is just starting to make a social network a living and breathing universe of communications and activity, but there is also the downside of getting up and running only to burn out and lose your momentum. In theory, every successful television show or community of users is a potential social network, but in reality, the translation process does not always take hold. In this session we will explore what it takes to create and maintain a successful social network and user generated media site. Ray Doustdar, Founder & President, TeamDating.com Matt Edelman, founder and CEO, PeopleJam Lin Dai, CEO, Kiwibox.com Chris Dominguez, President, GetBack Media, Inc. Mike La Rotonda, CEO and Chief Product Officer, Votigo Moataz Rashad, Founder & CEO, VuFind Scott Ehrlich, CEO Digiworks, Moderator Lin Dai is CEO of Kiwibox.com, the first social networking destination and online magazine for teens. Prior to Kiwibox, Lin launched K2 Entertainment, Inc., and established itself in the entertainment industry by managing and promoting major label recording artists from Bad Boy Records, Universal Records, Warner Music, etc., as well as providing casting services for major television networks such as MTV, ABC, NBC, and Fuse TV. In 2007, Lin Dai’s company Kiwibox Media, Inc. was successfully acquired by Magnitude Information Systems, Inc. Chris Dominguez, President, GetBack Media, Inc.: A veteran of the digital media industry, Chris is currently the President of GetBack Media, a venture backed digital media start-up based in Los Angeles, CA. Prior to joining Getback Media, Chris was Senior Vice President of Business Development at MTV Networks Entertainment Group specializing in digital video initiatives (IFILM). Chris was a member of the senior management team at IFILM Corporation that completed the $49M acquisition by Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA and VIA.B) in October of 2005. From 1995-2005, Chris was co-founder and President of Stockpoint, Inc., an ASP financial technology company. Chris completed an M&A transaction with ScreamingMedia (NASDAQ: SCRM), and subsequently served as Executive Vice President at ScreamingMedia through May 2002. Prior to Stockpoint, he worked in the publishing business and held positions at Cosmopolitan Magazine, The Daily Telegraph and Research Magazine. Chris was a pioneer in developing online financial content and application functionality for the financial services community, and was at the forefront of the digital video revolution creating ways to apply business models to web and mobile based video applications. Mike La Rotonda is the CEO and Chief Product Officer of Votigo and is a seasoned product leader with over 12 years of experience creating and managing consumer internet services for companies such as Yahoo!, ConsumerReview, and PointCast. For the past 9 years, Mike has focused on online communities and user-generated media. Since co-founding Votigo, Mike has helped several leading consumer brands, including Victoria's Secret PINK, ConocoPhillips, and Gardenburger, as well as top-tier advertising and marketing agencies, like Fleishman-Hillard, MWW Group, and Fanscape, develop and implement innovative social media marketing campaigns. He is also a contributor to Adotas. Ray Doustdar serves as President and Co-Founder. As President of his previous firm, The Stronghold Group, he created a premiere Entertainment Branding Agency, and signed high profile clients like Nelly, OutKast, Dave Matthews Band, and Motown Music Label for representation in licensing, sponsorships, and endorsements. Prior to that, he served two years as the Executive Director of Licensing for Universal Studios and was also appointed head of the new Sports Division, and signed high profile athletes like NFL Superstar Deion Sanders, NBA Player Wally Szczerbiak, and the Supercross/Motocross Honda Racing Team for licensing and merchandising. Previous to Universal Studios, Mr. Doustdar was the Director of Special Markets for BMG Entertainment. Before his tenure at BMG, Mr. Doustdar spent five years at consumer products giant Procter & Gamble. This provided a solid foundation of marketing and sales within the traditional packaged goods industry. Mr. Doustdar has a Bachelor of Science in Business degree from the Richard T. Farmer School of Business Administration at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He has been an online dater for 5 years. Moataz Rashad, Founder & CEO, VuFind Inc.: VuFind is a video and image cataloging and search engine that eliminates the need for manual tagging enabling intelligent efficient access to the video web. VuFind looks inside the videos and identifies objects, logos, concepts and faces and generates tags accordingly to make the videos efficiently search-able. Moataz has over 17 years of experience in innovating and leading successful products and IP for the Video, Imaging, VOIP, DSP, and Wireless communications markets. His work experience includes Mips, Silicon Graphics, TRW, Exponential, Samsung, Rockwell/Mindspeed, and Olympus. Throughout his career, Moataz has been an entrepreneur—even when he was managing large teams at Fortune 500 companies. He also led the technology investment strategy at a Dubai technology park where he was in charge of building alliances between Silicon Valley VCs, and regional investment institutions. Prior to founding VuFind, Moataz was Co-Founder & CEO of Magicvision-- a technology and management consulting firm in Silicon Valley. Moataz started his career as a database programmer at ABB in London at age 18. Moataz is the originator and recipient of 19 issued patents in multimedia architectures and algorithms, and parallel computing. Moataz was a PhD student at Stanford from 1993--1996 where he worked on concurrent event-based transaction processing systems and languages. Moataz holds an MSEE from Stanford's Computer Systems Lab, and an MS in Computer Science from University of Oregon with focus in distributed computing, and a BS with Distinction and Honors in Computer Science from Alexandria University. MATT EDELMAN, CEO, Co-Founder, PeopleJam, Inc.: Matt Edelman is an established entertainment and new media executive and producer who has demonstrated a unique blend of creative and business skills, consistently creating shareholder value by identifying and structuring key strategic partnerships, managing operational teams, developing content and implementing product marketing strategies across all media platforms. His production experience includes overseeing live-action and animated programming in film, television, broadband and mobile, as well as interactive products on the Internet and for wireless devices. Matt’s career has been marked by entrepreneurialism. Whether working within a public company in a new division, joining a start-up company to help run the organization or assisting companies as a consultant with the formation of new businesses, Matt has provided executive leadership, strategic guidance and creative supervision. The results of his business activities have lead to more than one billion dollars being spent by consumers on entertainment, branded merchandise and interactive products. In January 2006, Matt and his business partner founded MultiMedia Networks, a company focused on evaluating the market opportunity for new cross-platform content and community networks in several content categories. In November 2006, MMN created PeopleJam, Inc. and became committed to building a modern web portal dedicated to consumers interested in purposeful living. The portal will launch online and on mobile and handheld platforms in Q2 2007. Prior to starting MMN and PeopleJam, Matt formed Cusp, LLC, founded in 2001, through which he specialized in helping companies extend their intellectual properties into the television and wireless sectors. Through Cusp, Matt has developed business opportunities for numerous media, television, console game and technology companies, including Marvel Enterprises, Primedia, Activision, Gemstar-TV Guide, Maxim, Nike, Atom Films, Reveille and more. In television, while at Cusp, Matt developed and produced projects with MTV, UPN and Sci Fi Network. In mobile, Matt has been responsible for establishing several dozen entertainment partnerships between brand owners, wireless publishers, technology developers and mobile operators on a global scale. In late 2003, Matt was recruited away from Cusp to create and oversee the global publishing operation for Mforma Group, Inc. (now Hands-On Mobile), one of the world’s top publishers and distributors of branded entertainment for mobile devices. Matt built and ran Mforma’s international publishing group, specifically quintupling the company’s commercial product lines and overseeing from design to deployment more than 45 products that fueled to a ten-fold increase in the company’s revenue over three years. Matt also supervised the integration into the publishing group of four acquired international studios made up of more than 100 people over a nine month period. In addition to managing the Publishing organization, Matt oversaw certain aspects of the company’s product marketing and licensing activities. His team created dozens of promotions with Mforma’s distributors around the world. Matt also negotiated and closed Mforma’s largest entertainment partnerships, including multi-year global exclusive relationships with Marvel, the World Poker Tour and Billboard. Prior to Mforma, Matt was the Senior Vice President of Marvel Studios, the entertainment division of Marvel Enterprises, where he oversaw the day-to-day operation of a new film and television studio. He was involved in the development and production of more than 22 motion picture and television projects, including the X-Men, Blade, Daredevil, Hulk and Spider-Man feature films, as well as several animated TV series and TV movies. After leaving Marvel, Matt became President of Eruptor Entertainment, an online and mobile entertainment company. In his two years at Eruptor, Matt Executive Produced more than 15 online animated and live-action series, as well as the company’s signature mobile entertainment offering, PortaPets, which was profiled in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Upon departing Eruptor, Matt started Cusp. Matt and his wife live in Los Angeles and are enjoying life with their 18-month-old son, Maddox.