Click on the Video Below and Sample a Session from a previous Digital Hollywood event. For Additional Video Sessions, Click Here Digital Hollywood, October 19-22, 2009 Tuesday, October 20th SuperSessions Special Workshops 2:15 PM – 3:30 PM Workshop B: Virtual Worlds, Virtual Economies, Virtual Goods and Services and Virtual Gaming Virtual worlds, virtual gaming and virtual communities have spawned a universe of goods and services. With hundreds of millions of users consumed in online gaming or social media, the phenomenon of the virtual economy is becoming ever more innovative and based in impressive economic numbers. As the technology enables better and more creative consumer experience, enabling full rich media virtual services and economies, the size, scope and future of the virtual world will only first become understood and realized. Valerie Williamson, VP of Marketing and Business Development, The Electric Sheep Company Lee Clancy, Jr., Vice President of Product Management and General Manager, IMVU Craig Sherman, CEO, Gaia Online Steve Hoffman, CEO, RocketOn, Inc. Rob Goldberg, founder and Chief Executive Officer, GMG Entertainment Rob Uhrich, Senior Director, Digital Markets, PaymentOne Teemu Huuhtanen, EVP, Marketing, Ad Sales and Business Development, Sulake Corporation Dennis Fong, CEO, Raptr Hill Ferguson, Product Strategy and Marketing, Zong David Traub, VP Business Development, DigitalSportsMedia, Moderator Valerie Williamson, VP of Marketing and Business Development, The Electric Sheep Company: Valerie currently leads the Business Development efforts for The Electric Sheep Company. Valerie spent her formative business years working in the media, entertainment and events industries. Prior to ESC Valerie was the VP of Marketing and Business Development for OSTG (parent company of Slashdot and SourceForge.net), she also worked in the film industry at Orion Pictures back in the day, and was President of Interop Worldwide. Throughout her career, Williamson has led business, marketing, and sales strategy for leading media companies including OSTG, ZiffDavis Events/Key3Media, IDG Entertainment (GamePro Magazine and co-founder of the E3 tradeshow), and Orion Pictures. Rob Uhrich is Senior Director, Digital Markets for PaymentOne, the leading payment provider for alternative and global online payments. Rob has over a decade of business, market development and operations experience in payments and transaction processing for online based and digital content service providers. He has been with PaymentOne since it’s inception over 8 years ago and been instrumental in assisting PaymentOne’s clients in generating over $3.5 Billion in gross retail billings. Rob brings PaymentOne expertise in the digital entertainment and content markets. Prior to PaymentOne, he has held sales and business development positions in a variety of industries from shipping and logistics to medical devices. Rob has a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Santa Clara University. Lee Clancy, Jr., Vice President of Product Management and General Manager, IMVU: Lee (avatar "Leetri") joined IMVU in September 2008 from Yahoo!, where he was Senior Director for Community Products. At Yahoo!, Lee also led product management for Yahoo! Groups, a global community of 110 million users, and Yahoo! Personals, the most visited destination in the dating market. Prior to Yahoo!, Lee co-founded a music-focused social networking startup. Lee also worked at Broadband Office in business development and at PricewaterhouseCoopers in strategy consulting advising entertainment and media clients. Lee earned a B.A. in Spanish Literature from Amherst College, an M.B.A. from Cornell University, and an M.A. in International Relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Lee enjoys running, yoga, and getting outdoors with his wife and two great kids. Fluent in Spanish and French, he is a rabidly passionate fan of Sevilla FC Craig Sherman, CEO, Gaia Online: During business hours, Craig Sherman lives in gaiaonline.com, the leading teen hangout on the web. Craig leads the company’s strategic planning, management, and technology development. Prior to joining Gaia Online, Craig served as Entrepreneur in Residence at Benchmark Capital. Craig was also COO of MyFamily.com (ancestry.com), where he helped grow the company from $23 million to $150 million in sales and transform it from an advertising-based site to a highly profitable consumer subscription business. Before this, Craig held senior positions at American International Group, where he ran all marketing and internet sites for AIG in Japan and Korea. Steve Hoffman, CEO, RocketOn, Inc:. He's also a founding member of the Academy of Television's Interactive Media Group and the founder of the San Francisco Chapter of the Producers Guild of America. Prior to starting RocketOn, he was the COO and co-founder of Zannel, the first large-scale mobile instant media messaging platform. Before that, he was the North American Studio Head for Infospace, where he ran the North American mobile games publishing & development group. From 1998 - 2002, he was the Chairman & CEO of Spiderdance, Hollywood's leading interactive television studio, whose customers included NBC, Viacom, Time Warner, TBS, GSN and A&E. He also consulted for R/GA Interactive, designing projects for Kodak, Disney, Intel, AdAge, and Children's Television Workshop. From 1994 - 1998, he ran LavaMind, a developer & publisher of computer games and entertainment websites. In Japan, he worked as a game designer for Sega, generating new concepts and designs for games and amusement rides. Prior to Sega, he was a Hollywood development executive at Fries Entertainment, where he managed TV development. He graduated from the University of California with a BS in Electrical Computer Engineering and went on to earn a Masters in Film & Television from USC. He is also the co-author of "Game Design Workshop" published by CMP in 2004. Rob Goldberg, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GMG Entertainment: As a leading publisher of digital currency cards for the digital gaming and online entertainment industries, GMG connects content partners with the strongest performing retailers worldwide. Founded by CEO Rob Goldberg in 2002, GMG Entertainment creates and implements entertainment-based ideas for consumers and digital brands through traditional retail and consumer marketing. With partners on sale or launching at nearly 30,000 point-of-sale activated destinations including Best Buy, Target, Staples and Wal-Mart, GMG works directly with leading digital content creators and globally renown retailers to develop the nation’s most powerful digital-physical partnerships. Rob Goldberg is Founder and CEO of GMG Entertainment. Prior to founding GMG, Rob spent 7 years growing LAUNCH Media (now Yahoo! Music) where he was Vice President of Partnership Marketing and created the LAUNCH Breakout Artist Endcap at Target Stores nationwide. Rob's entrepreneurial spirit began early when at age 22 he was founder and CEO of the llizwe Trading Company, a youth-focused footwear and apparel company based in Cape Town, South Africa. Rob has a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin Madison. Teemu Huuhtanen, Executive VP, Marketing, Ad Sales and Business Development, Sulake Corporation and President, North America, Sulake Inc.: As executive vice president, Marketing, Ad Sales and Business Development, Sulake Corporation and president, North America, Sulake Inc., Teemu Huuhtanen is instrumental in leading the continued development and growth of Finnish-based Sulake’s top property, Habbo, one of the world’s most popular online social networking and virtual world communities for teens. Huuhtanen is responsible for cultivating relationships with major music, television and motion picture studios, as well as creating unique joint ventures with advertisers throughout the entertainment, retail, fashion and sports industries to generate relevant and interactive brand partnerships. His mission is to bring real-world mainstream entertainment properties and brands that are important to Habbo’s teen user base into the virtual community. Huuhtanen also oversees global marketing and public relations efforts for Sulake Corporation. He leads the Sulake team, which is responsible for the company’s online and offline marketing, as well as communications and PR. As an accomplished thought leader for the digital entertainment landscape, over the past four years Huuhtanen has regularly been a speaker at the industry’s premier conferences and business forums. He frequently addresses issues such as in-game brand engagement, working with entertainment properties, social networking and online gaming monetization models, among many other topics. The Hollywood Reporter recently ranked Huuhtanen on its “Digital Power 50 List” of top innovators who influence the creation and distribution of online content. He was also named one of the “Top 40 Under 40” executives to watch in the technology industry for 2007 by American Venture Magazine. Huuhtanen will serve as a panel judge at the Hollywood Netawards and Hollywood Mobile Awards during the 2008 Hollywood Film Festival. Also, he was a member of the Virtual Worlds Expo advisory board. Since Habbo’s launch in 2000, Huuhtanen has helped grow the teen virtual community to more than 9.5 million unique monthly users worldwide, in 32 countries on six continents. (Google Analytics). Prior to joining Sulake, Huuhtanen held several senior consumer and B2B sales and business development posts for numerous digital start-up companies worldwide. Huuhtanen is based and oversees Sulake’s North American headquarters in Santa Monica, Calif. David Traub, VP Business Development, DigitalSportsMedia: David earned a Masters in Education in 1990 from Harvard University, while conducting simultaneous class-work in interactive cinema and AI-based narrative at the MIT Media Lab. In 1984 he earned his undergraduate degrees in rhetoric and film with honors from the University of California at Berkeley, concluding with an honor thesis focusing on the use of film and television in education. His primary focus: the aggregation and delivery of "social and emotional" and other learning-centric applications/content via mobile phones, thin clients/PCs, TVs and videogames. He is currently writing the book: "17 Questions to Why You Are Here" as an introduction to his proprietary "mythological evaluation tool" that will be an example of such "augmentative" interfaces. In the real world, David has 20-years of experience as a digital media-oriented business development executive, investor, venture catalyst, and/or board member to over 35 startups/private equity companies. He has co-raised and deployed nearly $30 million dollars in support of these ventures. David has created digital media as an co-founder executive and/or executive producer of digital products across a wide variety of clients such as EMI North America, MCA Records, Philips/Polydor, Microsoft/ MSN, Apple Computer and many others. He is also an author of nearly 50 articles and reports on the evolution of the digital domain for trade publications, professional books and institutional clients; and a speaker who has given nearly 50 forward-looking keynote and other speeches throughout the world for clients such as the EU, the Swedish and Canadian Governments, TV Globo (Brazil), the National Institute of Film in Denmark, Viacom, US West, Mercedes/Siebold, The Broadband Content Development Forum and numerous other economic development agencies and universities. Hill Ferguson, Product Strategy and Marketing, Zong: Hill is responsible for product strategy and marketing at Zong. A payments veteran, Hill spent the last decade developing and managing new payment services in Silicon Valley. As General Manager for Yodlee's Personal Finance Products, Hill led the development and distribution efforts for several new and innovative payments products currently being used by top banks and web portals. At Yahoo! Hill produced and managed several consumer products, including a consumer bill payment product and a peer-to-peer payment service. In his spare time he manages LoanBack, a "friends and family" loan management service he co-founded in 2005. Hill earned a BS and an MBA, both from Vanderbilt University.