Press Release from SPAA:
SPAA has confirmed two further international guest speakers for their annual Conference: the “father of cross platform” Brian Seth Hurst, and the executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning participatory drama, The Truth About Marika, Christopher Sandberg.
Hurst, who will be a Keynote Speaker, is CEO of The Opportunity Management Company (TOMC), a strategic consultancy and cross media production company based in LA. He first coined the term “cross platform” in 1998, whilst MD of Convergent Media at Pittard Sullivan, where he launched TV Guide as the first ever cross platform brand. His credo is “go to where your audience lives”.
TOMC clients have included Showtime, Lifetime, Swedish Public Television and NBC Universal. Hurst was on the team that developed the original user experience for TiVo and he currently sits on the advisory boards of MobiTV, Zannel, Nixle and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Board of Governors. He is currently working on Tim Kring’s (creator of Heroes) next project, code-named “Teva”.
Hurst will address the Conference on After the Revolution: Content, Audiences and the Democratisation of Media on Thursday, 19 November at 9:00am when he will guide delegates “onto the revolutionary battlefield to survey the developing media landscape, its casualties and its opportunities.” Hurst says that major corporations once completely controlled the holy media trinity of technology, distribution, and content but this is ‘no more’.
Stockholm-based Sandberg is CEO and founder of television and new media production company The company P. He has over a decade of experience in start-ups and as a CEO/EP in television, online and mobile, ranging from drama to social applications and games. He was EP of The Truth About Marika, a participatory drama produced with SVT that won an International Interactive Emmy Award for Outstanding Interactive TV Services in 2008. Sandberg will speak about the making of the show on Wednesday, 18 November at 10:30am