Jason Waskey is a Principal Creative Director at Microsoft, where he has worked for over 20 years. He has worked in Mixed Reality development for the last 11 years—first with Microsoft Research, and then as a member of the original HoloLens program. Jason has been a part of Microsoft’s volumetric video effort since its beginning in 2010. He currently works as part of the company’s Mixed Reality Capture Studios team.

Leslie Shannon, Head of Ecosystem and Trend Scouting, Nokia: Leslie entered the mobile communications world as a billing database analyst in the early 1990s. She joined Nokia Australia in 2000 and became the manager of the FutureLab, an early developer incubator in the days of WAP, GPRS and 3G. Building on her first-hand technical and business experience of the reality of bringing applications to market, she developed an analysis service for Nokia that examined success and failure factors for operators bringing mobile data to market for 4G that proved so successful that Nokia created a new department around her work. While in this role, she was based in Finland and worked with over 100 operators in more than 70 countries. Leslie relocated to Silicon Valley in 2015 and now focuses on identifying disruptions and opportunities for Nokia and its operator partners coming from outside the traditional telco world, particularly in the worlds of 5G, AR, VR, MR and the Spatial Internet. She is passionate not only about bringing strategic insight to Nokia and its customers, but also about introducing successful new paradigms from Silicon Valley to the telecommunications mindset, and continues to be a highly-regarded analyst and speaker. Born in Manhattan, Leslie has a BA in Psychology from the University of Virginia and a Master’s Degree in the History of Art from Yale University. She was an undefeated five-time champion in the American television game show “Jeopardy!” in 1992 and was invited to return to the show to compete in a tournament for one million dollars as one of the show’s “most memorable contestants” in 2002 and again in 2014. (She didn’t win, but still had a lot of fun.) She also got four questions away from willing a million dollars on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” in August 2017. Leslie lives in Santa Clara, California, with her husband and their two mobile-data enthusiast children.

Cathy Hackl is a globally recognized metaverse/ web3 strategist, tech futurist, sought-after business executive, speaker and media personality with deep expertise working in metaverse-related fields with companies like HTC VIVE, Magic Leap, and Amazon Web Services. She’s the Chief Metaverse Officer & Co-founder of Journey, where she leads Journey's Metaverse Studio working with the world's top brands on metaverse/web3 strategies, NFTs, gaming, virtual fashion, and how to extend their brands into virtual worlds. Her consultancy, Futures Intelligence Group, was acquired in just 10 months and is now a part of Journey. Hackl was recently featured in 60 Minutes+, WSJ, TIME, and WIRED's coverage of the metaverse and is a contributor to Forbes. She has written two books and is writing an anticipated book on the business opportunities of the metaverse titled The Metaverse Economy coming out in early 2022. Hackl has been dubbed the Godmother of the Metaverse and is one of the top tech voices on LinkedIn. She's also the host of Adweek's Metaverse Marketing podcast. BigThink named Hackl one of the top 10 most influential women in tech in 2020 and in 2021 she was included in the prestigious Thinkers50 Radar list of the 30 management thinkers most likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led. She actively invests her money and time in helping move the nascent web 3.0 industry forward.

Gordon Synn joined NPR as Senior Director of Partnership Development for the content divisions. He leads the newly-formed content business strategy team in Programming. Gordon and his team evaluate and model new content opportunities, negotiate partnership and IP deals and help NPR find new ways to have impact with its public service journalism and cultural programming, with the goal of serving a diverse America. In some cases, to paraphrase Star Trek, they will help NPR go where NPR has never gone before! Gordon is an entertainment, media, content and technology executive with substantial experience in digital media, film, television, technology and content monetization globally. His expertise includes global and domestic partnerships, business development, strategy, sales, joint ventures, deal making, creative content and curation, platform launches and management, entrepreneurship, leadership, team collaboration and new business initiatives. He was previously Head of International TV at DreamWorks Animation (Comcast and NBCUniversal owned) where he spearheaded revenue growth globally and also new IP initiatives in VR/AR. Gordon was also at All3Media (Discovery and Liberty Global owned) as SVP Digital and Business Development and at Endemol Shine Group as Global Head of Digital and Home Entertainment in London. In both roles he led substantial revenue growth and results across key IP and content including Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Xbox Studios and Roku.Gordon was also a senior executive at 21st Century Fox with both Worldwide Television Distribution and Fox International Channels. Gordon joined 21st Century Fox in-house after working as their outside counsel. Gordon graduated from Harvard Law School and U.C.L.A.

Dade Orgeron, Vice President, 3D Innovation, Shutterstock: Dade Orgeron has been building virtual worlds for over 25 years. He has worked as a 3D Designer, Art Director, Creative Director, 3D Director and mentor - helping 3D artists hone the skills they need to become masters of their craft. In 2013, Dade joined TurboSquid to help build and curate the world’s largest 3D content library and to bring 3D models to an even wider audience of non-3D users. Since then, his focus has been to simplify the overtly technical challenges facing 3D artists by developing standards, tools, and training that allow artists to focus more on the creative side of 3D content creation. Now at Shutterstock, his vision for feeding content to the Metaverse gains even sharper focus as he looks toward harnessing AI and ML technologies to help 3D content creators build, conform, manage, and distribute their 3D content. Dade is based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Brett Leonard is considered one of Hollywood’s most innovative film directors, and is known as one of the entertainment industry’s top digital-media visionaries. Mr. Leonard has recently been named by The Producers Guild of America, in association with Variety Magazine, as one of its “Digital 25”, recognizing the twenty five leading visionaries, innovators and producers who have made significant contributions to the advancement of storytelling through digital media. The Guild’s 4,500 members, including producers of film, television and new media, along with a distinguished Digital 25 Advisory Board, voted Mr. Leonard for this honor. Other recipients include directors James Cameron and Ridley Scott. (see Variety Magazine spread announcing the winners at the end of this document). Mr. Leonard became a globally-recognized pioneer of digital filmmaking when he directed and co-wrote the hit motion picture Lawnmower Man, starring Pierce Brosnan and Jeff Fahey. The film is considered a cult classic, way ahead of its time in the use of groundbreaking computer graphics, and the portrayal of a networked data culture. Lawnmower Man is one of the true progenitors of the “cyber genre” and was the number one commercially successful independent film of 1992, costing under $6 million and earning over $200 million worldwide. Mr. Leonard was a key participant of the Sony 2000 think tank, a small group of media visionaries assembled to discuss the future of media by the top brass of the Sony corporation. He directed Peter Gabriel’s Kiss That Frog, the first HD all computer graphic music video/ride film. Kiss That Frog toured the world as wildly popular theme park attraction, and won Mr. Leonard a 1994 MTV Music Video Award. In 1994 Mr. Leonard co-founded L-Squared Entertainment, a company that became known as a leader in next- generation digital production techniques for the new era of 3D stereoscopic filmmaking. During this time, Mr. Leonard continued to push the envelope in his feature film work, establishing himself as a pioneer of digital visual effects and cutting-edge independent film, and 3D production. He first stepped into the third dimension with his IMAX 3D work, and directed T-Rex: Back To The Cretaceous in IMAX 3D, which was the No.#1 hit 3D movie in history for over ten years, having grossed over $100 million worldwide on IMAX screens alone. It was also the first 3D film to use photo-realistic computer graphics and stereoscopic compositing; techniques that led to the innovations of current 3D film spectaculars such as James Cameron’s Avatar. He then went on to direct Anthony Hopkins in the IMAX 3D spectacular The Magic Box. Mr. Leonard is also known for having a keen eye for new talent, both in front of and behind the camera. He was instrumental in bringing Russell Crowe to American film audiences, giving Russell his first lead in a Hollywood film, Virtuosity, starring Denzel Washington and directed by Mr. Leonard. He did the same for Alicia Silverstone in his film for Tri-Star, Hideaway, and started Rachel Taylor’s career (Transformers, American Horror Story) in his film for Marvel Studios, Man-Thing. Television star, Alex O’Loughlin (lead in the smash-hit series Hawaii Five-O), was given his first break by Brett, and first appeared in Mr. Leonard’s films, Man-Thing and Feed. Mr. Leonard has also been instrumental in dozens of careers behind the camera – Some of the most notable are production designer, Alex McDowell (Minority Report, The Terminal, Watchmen) who’s first feature was Lawnmower Man, and director of photography Russell Carpenter, who went on to win the Academy Award for Titanic. Literally hundreds of computer graphic animators and 3D innovators who are now in the top ranks all got their start on Mr. Leonard’s groundbreaking films. Mr. Leonard is again pioneering new media forms with a musically driven feature film concept for the Internet called PopFictionLife – Believing that new content distribution platforms need their own creative “genres”, Mr. Leonard and his team have focused on creating projects in a style designed specifically for “personal screens” (iPhone, iPad, etc.). PopFictionLife is an Internet movie concept where a music-driven story is told in 5min “Frags” that connect together to form a full-length feature film. A FragFilm is not a typical web series – it delivers the “movie” experience in a form parsed for the short attention spans of the YouTube generation, designed for easy viewing and downloading on the Internet and mobile platforms. FragFilms of the PopFictionLife genre revolve around the actual lives of developing or established music artists, fictionalized in fun and creative ways to have the dramatic impact of a Hollywood movie. This presents the artist and their music in an entertaining and compelling context beyond “reality”, with the style and high production values audiences expect from feature films and television. Mr. Leonard has produced and directed the first two FragFilms of the PopFictionLife concept, entitled Feel (for Hollywood Records/Disney), and The Other Country (for PFL Transmedia), both of which have been distributed world- wide through the Internet.

John Canning, Director Developer Relations - Creators, AMD. John Canning, a leading expert in all "Media, Technology and Platform Issues" has recently joined AMD. For the past few years, he had been with Digital Domain, - renown for creative visual effects for feature films, including the recent Avengers Infinity War movie. They also create visuals for advertising, games, training, and immersive content, including their own original content. Prior to Digital Domain, John was the VP of Interactive Experiences for NBCUniversal, creating VR and other digital experiences for The Voice, Million Second Quiz, The Blacklist, and others. In the past, he’s also spent several years at both Microsoft and Disney. On the side, he’s the Chairman of the New Media Council at the Producers Guild of America. He’s also an independent producer, cinematographer, and photographer for good causes.