Advisory Board

Meet the conference Advisory Board!

The industry professionals volunteer their time and effort to help develop the conference sessions. Their support is essential and valuable in ensuring the success of the conference and ensuring high-level quality content is provided to allow attendees an enjoyable experience.
 

Jim Horth, Producer at Rare Ltd, Microsoft Game Studios
Jim has worked with Rare for over 9 years, originally as an engineer and software manager, but more recently looking after commercial and production issues. He has a keen interest in convergent media and the impact of mobile, web and server technology on all aspects of the game experience: personally directing the product analytics programme at Rare and piloting the aspects of the game experience that live “outside the box”. www.rare.co.uk

Kevin Corti, CEO & Development Director, Soshi Games
Kevin co-founded a big-thinking, highly ambitious gaming company called SOSHI GAMES that seeks to use the medium of social games to affect positive social impact on a global scale based at Birmingham Science Park Aston. Prior to this, Kevin achieved the status of being one of a small group of internationally-recognised ‘serious games’ and immersive learning simulation experts who has the proven ability to lead the sales, design and delivery of innovative learning solutions for the private, public and education sectors. www.soshigames.com

Jason Hall, Head of Network & Partnerships, Game Central
Having spent the last three years managing a major £5m Digital Media Fund, identifying and developing games and digital projects for investment – often alongside Channel 4’s groundbreaking 4iP Fund – Jason is now working with numerous UK agencies, industry and educational partners to develop new funds and structures for supporting digital and creative industries. This includes dedicated support for the games industry via Game Central – the industry support organisation established in 2009 by Screen WM. This is augmented by more than fifteen years experience working across digital projects for Teebster Productions, from developing B2B online booking systems to commissioning mobile content and producing and developing cross-platform projects, events, worskhops and broadcast productions for clients including Channel 4, BBC, NSPCC, Nokia, Scottish Screen, Scottish Enterprise and NESTA. www.gamecentral.org.uk

Andrew Goff, Founder, Interactive Opportunities
Andrew founded Interactive Opportunities bringing key elements of the education sector and the interactive industries together. Andrew’s has first-hand experience of working with the video gaming industry and working through the infrastructure, pedagogy and practice by which these technologies and content can be successfully harnessed in education. Andrew’s expertise is in developing, communicating and embedding learning opportunities based on new and innovative technologies. Andrew has strong relationships with numerous games publishers and platform holders; such as Sony PlayStation with whom he has worked on their educational strategy for the last 5 years. A key area of Andrew’s current interest and work is in developing learning opportunities from broadcast technologies and augmented reality technologies.

Oliver Williams, Associate Director, NTI @ Birmingham City University
Oliver is Associate Director of at the New Technology Institute (NTI) in Birmingham. As well as delivering application development and web projects Oliver runs a post graduate level suite of courses at Birmingham City University that prepare students for high profile careers in the tech and media sectors.  One of these programmes is Gamer Camp which prepares students to be either successful employees in the games industry or successful start up indie developers. Gamer Camp was cited in the NESTA Livingstone-Hope Review of Skills in Video Games and Visual Effects report Feb 2011 as a best practice example for preparing individuals for success in the games industry. Oliver also provides technology project management consultancy and helps place new talent with business. www.gamercamp.co.uk

Charlie Horn, Creative Director & Design Demon at OOP! Games Studio
Charlie is co director of OOP! Games Studio. He has past experience in the digital sector, fronting large projects for clients such Sony and Car phone Warehouse. Charlie’s passion is for illustration and animation, skills which are put to good use in OOP’s current game releases. The OOP! team offer a fusion of talent allowing them to translate games and applications onto mobile and online platforms giving their users and clients the accessibility they require in this digital universe. The future at OOP! looks exciting with a full schedule of releases planned for 2011 in conjunction with a number of new and inspiring clients and business partnerships. After being presented with Birmingham’s 2010 Digital Entrepreneurs Award, OOP! intend to continue producing high quality sought after gaming experiences and also add to their trophy cabinet! www.oopworld.co.uk

Sam Collins, Commercial Manager, The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE)
Sam has worked in the videogames industry for seventeen years. He has an extensive publisher background, which includes developing digital sales strategies for PC, console and mobile products, and has established pan-European distribution networks for both boxed and digital products. He has worked for Domus Software in Amsterdam and Virgin Interactive in the UK. Most recently, Sam spent ten years at Majesty House where, as Head of Sales, he oversaw European sales for both Midas Interactive Entertainment and Ghostlight Ltd. In his role as Commercial Manager for the UK Interactive Entertainment Association (UKIE), Sam is responsible for all aspects of Member support and the delivery of products and services to help members thrive and expand in the UK market. www.ukie.org.uk

Sarah Darch, Investment Manager, Marketing Birmingham
Sarah is an investment manager supporting the financial and digital media sectors set-up in the Birmingham area. Sarah brings extensive experience of working at a senior level within both private and public sector organisations, working with large corporates and SME’s across a diverse range of sectors, including Financial and Professional Services, ICT, Digital Media, Retail and the Public Sector. Since 2007 she has focussed specifically on inward investment, leading the Financial and Professional Services sector and North America programme for Manchester’s inward investment agency, MIDAS. www.businessbirmingham.com

Saint John Walker, Computer Games/Animation/Facilities Manager at Skillset
Saint has been brokering new animation and computer games talent at the interface of education and industry for over twelve years, and joined Skillset from FDMX, the Film and Digital Media Exchange, where he was a founding member of ‘Games Eden’ the East of England’s games business networking organisation. Saint worked on Skillset’s contribution to the Livingstone Hope Next-Gen review, has co-designed new accreditation systems for games and animation, and co-authored the new Core Skills of VFX Handbook, Skillset’s push to change VFX education in the UK. Saint is a member of the Next Gen steering group which is working on promoting and delivering the 20 recommendations of the Livingstone Hope review. Previously, Saint was external examiner for animation courses at Universities of Wales, Hertfordshire, Swansea and Kingston. www.skillset.org/games

Nia Wearn, Senior Lecturer in Computer Games Design at Staffordshire University
Nia is a Games Design Lecturer at Staffordshire University, teaching mainly the production side of things and is also award leader BSc (Hons) Computer Gameplay Design & Production. Nia does a lot of work with Groups and Game Design and Development. http://blogs.staffs.ac.uk/nhw1/

Dean Reilly, Games Development Course Leader, Birmingham Metropolitan College
After starting a career in journalism, Dean specialised in computer and video game reviews. After building up impressive contacts within games, and writing for Channel 4, MTV, Future Publishing and EMAP, he then started appearing as a guest university lecturer, speaking on topics as diverse as interactive media, cult media and fandom. He went on to launch the first dedicated games development qualification aimed at 16 to 19 year olds in Birmingham. Most recently, he launched a series of “An Evening With…” events that saw games industry figures such as Philip and Andrew Oliver of Blitz Games Studios and Ian Livingstone OBE of Eidos meet games enthusiasts in the Midlands. He is currently course leader for Games Development at Birmingham Metropolitan College, and writes for a range of online publications, including the Webby-award winning Escapist Magazine. www.bmetc.ac.uk

Tim Luft, Operations Director, Serious Games Institute
Tim Luft is the Director for the Serious Games Institute (SGI) in Coventry. The SGI combines research into Serious Games, Business Incubation, training and development studios. The SGI are able to offer a range of support to companies in the development of 3D virtual worlds, serious games, mobile applications (including smartphones and tablets) and interactive  3D simulations. The SGI have developed considerable experience in the design and development of serious games across multiple platforms and are able to support companies at every stage of the development process.   www.seriousgamesinstitute.co.uk

Drew Wilkins, Production Director, fish in a bottle
Drew’s career in the digital world started in 1998 when he began working for games company Attention to Detail as a Producer / Game Designer. Drew is now one of the founders and directors of fish in a bottle, one of the UK’s leading creative digital agencies.  One of his BBC projects, the website build for Children’s TV programme ‘In The Night Garden’, was BAFTA nominated.  His involvement in creating a new online character for the cult TV show Heroes showed the character making her way from the web into the show. www.fishinabottle.com

Ilmari Heikkinen, Chrome Developer Programs Engineer, Google UK
Ilmari is a Chrome Developer Programs Engineer at Google UK, with a focus on the web graphics stack. I’m an invited expert on the Khronos WebGL working group and have written a couple Canvas-based graphics libraries. My most recent published work (from before joining Google) are the 2D game Runfield and an augmented reality demo, both made for Mozilla’s Web O’(pen) Wonder. Before that, a friend and I tried to build a web startup in OCaml. Which was interesting. I have a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Helsinki.

Dr Sarah Slater, Director of the Institute of Gaming and Animation/IT Futures/e-Innovation Centre: University of Wolverhampton
Sarah is both the Director of the Institute of Gaming and Animation and IT Futures (Digital Media and IT Consultancy) at the University of Wolverhampton. Her research areas include applying the psychology of emotion and memory to characters in games and virtual worlds in order to improve the user experience, and interface design. Her applied research has covered commercial games projects as well as using games technologies in cross sector businesses. Sarah is also the Director of IT Futures which is a West Midlands based consultancy based out of the University of Wolverhampton, offering project management and digital media and IT Consultancy internationally.  www.wlv.ac.uk

Chris Swan, Head of IndieCity
Chris heads up IndieCity, which is a new eCommerce gaming platform that aims to be the one-stop shop for all things indie gaming. Prior to this Chris headed up the Blitz 1UP initiative which helps indie developers get their games to market, and has previously held several senior roles within Blitz relating to business development, strategic planning and project management. Interests include indie games, crowd power, web tech, social media, semantic web, robots and future technologies in general. www.indiecity.com    www.blitzgamesstudios.com

Jon Kingsbury, Programme Director – Creative Economy, NESTA
Jon runs NESTA’s the Creative Economy Innovation Programme with a remit to encourage growth in creative businesses by developing successful models for innovation. He previously worked at the BBC as Head of External Supply, Future Media & Technology where his role was to improve the organisation’s engagement with external creative suppliers. Before becoming interested in driving creative business growth, Jon held a number of senior editorial commissioning roles at the BBC and Channel 4, always in the space where linear TV broadcasting meets interactive content. www.nesta.org.uk

Maria Stukoff, Academic Partnership Manager,
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd (SCE Europe)
Maria is the Academic Partnership Manager at SCE Europe, managing SCEE’s academic programme and is responsible for driving PlayStations new talent initiatives through student programmes, competitions and industry partnerships. Maria was the driving force behind the former NW game development network The Game Alliance Ltd. having worked closely with local game developers to promote the industry and in establishing links with education. Maria has 16 years experience working across the creative industries in concept development, interactive design and digital production, with a keen interests in mobile technology and interactive media. www.uk.playstation.com

Adam Parsons, Lead Producer, People Can Fly
Adam was the Executive Producer at Codemasters for over twelve years until August 2011 heading internal development on Operation Flashpoint: Red River, the authentic, military tactical FPS, launched in the UK in April, and the USA in early June 2011. Adam drives game vision, creativity and business goals and has over 12 years in the games industry. Adam is now working as lead producer for People Can Fly founded in Warsaw, Poland specialising in fast paced First Person Shooters wtih majority stakeholders of People Can Fly by Epic Games. www.peoplecanfly.com