Press release from the PR Group
Some of the world’s most influential entrepreneurs in mobile, interactive media and entertainment including Gotham Chopra, Advisor to Al Gore and co-founder of entertainment company Liquid Comics; Zareh Nalbandian, co-founder and CEO Animal Logic; Neeraj Roy, Bollywood’s biggest content owner; and Susan Bonds, the world’s pioneer of Alternate Reality Games and President of 42 Entertainment, will gather in Sydney for XMediaLab Sydney Opera House ‘Global Media Cultures’.
Against the backdrop of the huge growth rates and commercial opportunities being presented by the rise of China, India, the Middle East and North and South Asia, XMediaLab Sydney Opera House ‘Global Media Cultures’ will explore the latest innovations in digital media, broadcast, film and interactive content creation and distribution technologies to help local digital media professionals gain a better understanding of the new opportunities for co-production and the business models required to successfully tap into in these emerging markets.
“New markets require new approaches,” said Brendan Harkin, Founder and Director of XMediaLab. “XMediaLab Sydney Opera House is a truly international event that will help Australia’s digital media professionals create important international networks and gain a better understanding of how to tap into these high growth markets which boast the biggest numbers of consumers, the largest youth markets, the greatest emerging talent pools and increasing investment resources.”
International Keynote speakers include:
• Gotham Chopra – Media Entrepreneur; Co-founder Liquid Comics; Advisor to Al Gore’s Current.tv and voted by Newsweek magazine as one of the “most powerful and influential” South Asians worth watching (New York)
• Neeraj Roy – One of the ’50 most influential people in Mobile Entertainment’, Bollywood’s biggest digital content owner and Managing Director and CEO, Hungama Mobile (Mumbai)
• Tonny Sorenson – CEO and Owner, Von Dutch Originals; Co-founder, Planetillogica.com (Los Angeles)
• Wang Xing – China’s most successful social media entrepreneur. Named Business Week Asia’s Best Young Entrepreneurs 2008. Founder of social networking sites Xiaonei.com Hainei.com, and Fanfou.com (Beijing)
• Susan Bonds – President and CEO, 42 Entertainment and winner of multiple Cannes Grand Prix awards (Los Angeles)
• Julian Merceron – Worldwide CTO, Eidos – the video game company that launched Lara Croft (London)
• Chris Deering – Chairman of the Board, Codemasters; formerly Head of Sony Europe (London)
• Zareh Nalbandian – CEO and Co-founder, Animal Logic (Sydney)
• Nam Do – Co-founder and CEO, Emotiv, and nominated as one of Australia’s top ten digital media entrepreneurs (Melbourne, San Francisco)
• Ken Goldstein – Emmy Award Winner and Co-founder, Planetillogica.com (Los Angeles)
• August de los Reyes – Principal Design Director for Microsoft Surface (Redmond)
• Zheng Xiaoping – Principal, BAZO – one of China’s leading Urban Developers and Author of “China Creative Cities” (Shanghai)
• Jason DaPonte – Managing Editor, BBC Mobile Platforms (London)
• JoAnn Kuchera-Morin – Director, Allosphere Research Laboratory (Santa Barbara)
• Rob Manson – Managing Director of MOB – an Innovation Lab (Sydney)
XMediaLab Sydney Opera House ‘Global Media Cultures’ consists of a one-day public conference (27th November – General Admission), followed by an intensive two-day workshop (28-29th November) where selected projects work with international mentors on developing their own creative ideas.
Speaker biographies are included in this press release.
For the latest XMediaLab updates follow us on twitter @xmedialab, hash tag #xmedialab.
To register for the event, nominate your project to the Lab, or to read more about the keynote speakers, visit www.xmedialab.com
– ENDS –
For interviews, press passes and other information please contact The PR Group.
Caroline Shawyer: Mob: 0401 496 334. Email: caroline@prgroup.com.au Twitter: @cshawyer
About XMediaLab
XMediaLab is the internationally acclaimed professional network and digital media event for the world’s creative industries. XMediaLab provides assistance with creative industries development, business development and access to international expertise and finance. Each XMediaLab is a completely unique event where people with original digital media ideas connect with a superb international network of independent creative thinkers, technology wizards, commercialisation experts, potential business partners and financial resources. www.xmedialab.com
XMediaLab returns to the Sydney Opera House on its sixth anniversary. Since it’s founding at the Sydney Opera House in 2003, 26 XMediaLab events have been held in 10 locations all around the world including: Melbourne, Singapore, Seoul, Beijing, Suzhou, Mumbai, Auckland, London, Wellington and Los Angeles.
Speaker Biographies
Gotham Chopra
Media Entrepreneur: Co-founder of Liquid Comics; Advisor to Current.tv; Multi-award winning journalist and documentary filmmaker (New York)
Gotham is the co-founder of Liquid Comics (formerly Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation), a premiere entertainment company based in Los Angeles and Bangalore India. As part of the company, Gotham works with creators to develop graphic novels and is also responsible for packaging and producing the books as they evolve into games, films, and more. At present Gotham is collaborating with notable talents like John Woo, Guy Ritchie, Nic Cage, Hugh Jackman, John Moore, Ed Burns and more as well as media companies like Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Universal Studios, Sony, Freemantle, Reliance, UTV and others.
Gotham is the author of four books, including the graphic novels Bulletproof Monk for which he also served along with John Woo as Executive Producer on the feature film produced by MGM Studios (2003) and The Sadhu, which he is also currently adapting as a feature film with the director Tarsem Singh. Formerly an award winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, Gotham reported from countless warzones and has interviewed a wide range of global leaders. He also served as researcher and lyrical advisor to Michael Jackson on the multi-platinum albums Dangerous and HIStory. More recently Gotham was integrally involved in the formation of Current TV, co-founded by former Vice-President Al Gore and launched in 20 million homes in August of 2005. Gotham remains a contributor and key advisor to the network as it continues to re-define and democratise the “television experience.”
Gotham’s varied experience in journalism, publishing, and entertainment had him identified by Newsweek Magazine (March 04) as one of the “most powerful and influential” South Asians worth watching. At present, he is developing a non-scripted television show Medicine Man (www.medicinemantv.com) that is scheduled to launch in early 2010. He blogs regularly at www.intent.com, which he co-founded and thinks, is “pretty awesome” as well as www.huffingtonpost.com.
www.liquidcomics.com
Neeraj Roy
Managing Director & CEO, Hungama Mobile (Mumbai)
Hungama Mobile is the largest aggregator, developer and publisher of BOLLYWOOD content in the world. Hungama has developed a digital distribution network spanning 37 countries with over 150 partners across Mobile, Internet, Cable VOD and IPTV services, representing over 300 original content owners across Music, Movies, TV, Sport, Lifestyle content
Hungama Mobile has now launched a Bollywood channel with over 150 operators in 37 countries on networks such as SingTel, Maxis, MTN, O2, Telis etc and also internet based services such as Apple iTunes, MSN Music, Yahoo! Music etc.
Hungama are the owners of the three biggest entertainment portals in South Asia, Hungama.com and BollywoodHungama.com, The # 1 Bollywood portal in the world and GamingHungama.com Hungama Mobile has an active Mobile Entertainment and Marketing/Applications business, which has been engaged with over 300 brands and developed over 1000 interactive campaigns.
Hungama has won over 60 awards in Digital Marketing, including 4 ABBY Golds, PMAA Singapore and the Globes in Miami.
Neeraj was voted amongst the ‘50 Most influential People in Mobile Entertainment’ globally 3 years in a row. He was recently selected amongst the ‘Top 10 MobiThinkers of 2009’ worldwide. Neeraj is the Chairman of Mobile Entertainment Forum, an organization of over 200 members from all the entire value chain of the Mobile Entertainment business. Neeraj was one of the founders of TiE in India and has been on the Board of TiE Mumbai chapter for several years. Neeraj is also an active speaker at various international forum such as the Mobile World Congress, MIPCOM, Cannes Film Festival, CTIA etc and on several domestic and international committees advising on the global Mobile & Digital Entertainment community.
www.brandingbrands.net Corp Site
www.bollywoodhungama.com Bollywood Portal
www.gaminghungama.com Gaming Portal
www.hungama.com Entertainment
www.saavn.com US Entertainment Portal
Tonny Sorensen
CEO and Owner, Von Dutch Originals; Co-founder, Planet Illogica (Los Angeles)
Tonny Sorensen Danish born entrepreneur, Tonny Sorensen, is a visionary who believes in the expansion of creative ideas among many artistic disciplines including fashion, fine and lowbrow art, music performance, multi-media entertainment, the kustom kulture and culinary art.
Honouring what he loves best, Mr. Sorensen, an Olympic athlete who has held the title of World Heavy Weight Tae Kwon Do Champion, combined all of these artistic voices into one unified creative space called Planet Illogica.
Tonny’s main role is “conceptualist”. His avant-garde business philosophy, legendary ‘one second rule’ and unique creative vision contribute to a personal mantra that delivers unlimited possibility, originality and artistic freedom to artists and corporations with a creative agenda.
Tonny is no stranger to lending his vision to successful enterprise, as his business and life experiences have proven wildly successful for his companies Von Dutch Originals, 1984, GLADSAXE dojo school in Denmark, and the recently launched clothing company, Civil Smith.
www.planetillogica.com
Wang Xing
Business Week Asia’s Best Young Entrepreneur 2008. Founder of Hainei.com, Fanfou.com, Xiaonei.com (Beijing)
Wang Xing might become the Mark Zuckerberg of China. His first Web site, Xiaonei.com, which started in 2005, has the same design as Facebook and became the most popular social network for Chinese college students. Xiaonei, which literally translates to "on campus," was so successful that Wang sold the site to Oak Pacific Interactive less than a year later. Wang now manages two new sites: Hainei.com, a social network for working adults, and Fanfou.com, a microblogging service for people to stay connected through the exchange of text and photos via the Web, instant message, or mobile phone.
In 2008 Wang was named Business Week Asia’s Best Young Entrepreneur at the age of 29. Wang graduated from Tsinghua University in Beijing with a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering and from the University of Delaware with a master’s in computer engineering.
Susan Bonds
President and CEO, 42 Entertainment (Pasadena)
Susan Bonds is 42 Entertainment’s President and CEO, responsible for leading the teams that design, create, and execute 42’s unique immersive experiences. Susan has more than 20 years of experience as a producer in the entertainment, gaming and technology industries.
In 2004 Susan produced the unique ilovebees campaign for Microsoft’s marketing launch of Halo 2, which won the Games Developer’s Conference award for Innovation in Gaming and a Webby Award for Best Games Related Website. Since then, she has produced all of 42’s projects, including 2006’s Last Call Poker (Activision), Dead Man’s Tale (Disney and MSN) and 2007’s The Vanishing Point, the first global puzzle game with clues to online puzzles embedded in spectacular events held in a dozen cities around the globe designed to celebrate the launch of Windows Vista. In 2007, Susan produced the alternate reality experience Year Zero for the launch of NIN’s April 2007 album by the same name, which won two 2008 Webby Awards, a CLIO for content and contact, and the Cannes Grand Prix Award. In 2008, Susan produced Why So Serious? the innovative alternate reality game for Warner Bros. The Dark Knight, which recently won the 2009 Cannes Grand Prix Award.
Directly prior to joining 42, Susan was Chief Design and Production Officer for Cyan Worlds, where she was responsible for the multiplayer online interactive game URU: Ages Beyond Myst. Susan led the design, production, technology integration, marketing, publishing, music development and project management for the initiative, working with Rand Miller, CEO and co founder of Cyan, and also produced realMyst, a three-dimensional world version of the popular PC game. Prior to this, Susan worked for ten years as Creative Director/Senior Show Producer for Walt Disney Imagineering, where she directed the design and development of major attractions, themed architecture, Internet entertainment projects, and proprietary new ride systems. Her portfolio spanned Tokyo, California, Florida, and New York, and included attractions such as Indiana Jones Adventure for Disneyland, Alien Encounters for Walt Disney World, Mission: SPACE for Epcot and ABC Times Square Studios Exterior in New York.
Susan started her career at Walt Disney in 1980 as an industrial engineer, and then worked for seven years at Lockheed as an Aircraft and Systems Engineer on Advanced Development Projects. Susan has an Engineering degree from Georgia Institute of Technology, and an MBA from Georgia State University.
www.42entertainment.com
Chris Deering
Chairman, Codemasters; formerly President of Sony Computer Entertainment – Europe (London)
Chris Deering has led multicultural motion picture video and computer game publishing for nearly 3 decades, initially as Vice President – International for Atari game consoles and computers, and subsequently as Executive Vice President and COO for Columbia Pictures International Video, and from 1995 to 2005 as President of Sony Computer Entertainment – Europe (SCEE). At SCEE he led the team that has sold over 80 million consoles and facilitated the sale of over 1 billion games. Most of SCEE’s original management team, set up by Chris, remains at the core of PlayStation leadership, now including the management of Sony’s worldwide game development studios.
Chris now serves as Chairman of the Board for Codemasters, the world’s leading independent video game developers; and as non-exec Chairman of Learning Without Frontiers Ltd. Chris served as Chairman of Jalipo.com which was sold to ROK Entertainment, and is currently an advisor for Playspan, Text Appeal, Vlvox, Livstation.com, PushButtonMusic and Playfire. Chris serves as Chairman of the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival.
www.codemasters.co.uk / www.codemasters.com
www.learningwithoutfrontiers.com
August de los Reyes
Principal Design Director for Microsoft Surface, Microsoft (Redmond)
August de los Reyes is the Principal Design Director for Microsoft Surface whose team is dedicated to pioneering intuitive ways to interact with technology.
De los Reyes is a member of the Advanced Studies Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design where he received an MDesS with Distinction in product design through which he explored the relationship of emotion and design intent. An affiliate design faculty member at University of Washington, de los Reyes was a visiting associate at the University of Oxford, and a 2009 juror of the International Design Excellence Awards. He is researching his next book entitled The Poetics of Everyday Objects.

www.microsoft.com/surface/
Zareh Nalbandian
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Animal Logic (Sydney)
Zareh Nalbandian has led Animal Logic’s development from a handful of gifted artists into one of the world’s leading visual effects, design & animation studios.
Throughout the history of Animal Logic, Zareh has had multiple roles: as CEO, Visual Effects Supervisor, Mentor and Producer building strong relationships with great Directors and Producers in the Industry.
Since its inception, Animal Logic has produced digital animation and visual effects for international television commercials including campaigns for Sony, Toyota, Nintendo and Visa, as well as the Carlton Draught Big Ad, No 5 – The Film’ for Chanel No 5, and Tourism Australia. In 1996, Animal Logic moved into Visual Effects for feature film and established its headquarters at the Fox Studios lot in Sydney. Since moving into feature film, Animal Logic has built up a strong portfolio of credits – Babe, Babe: Pid in the City, The Matrix, Matrix: Reloaded, Charlotte Gray, Moulin Rouge!, Hero, and House of Flying Daggers are some of Animal Logic’s notable films, and more recently Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Stealth, World Trade Center, 300, Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, and Knowing.
As an Executive Producer of Australia’s first 3D animated feature film, Happy Feet, Zareh was able to create a world first due to a combination of the film’s photo-real visuals and highly complex performances. He worked in close association with Kennedy Miller to create this Academy Award winning film. Animal Logic’s second feature animation, Guardians of Ga’hoole (2010 release), is currently in production with Zareh as the Producer. The film, based on the popular children’s book series by Kathryn Lasky, is being directed by Zack Snyder (300).
www.animallogic.com
Nam Do
Cofounder and CEO, Emotiv (Melbourne, San Francisco)
Nam Do is a serial technology entrepreneur. Prior to forming Emotiv, Nam co-founded and ran SASme, a pioneer in providing SMPP platforms to telecommunication carriers and content aggregators in Australia and Asia. SASme is one of the companies largely responsible for the creation of Australia’s SMS application market. Nam helped grow SASme from its humble beginnings to a thriving company with multiple markets worldwide.
Nam’s background is in Strategic Planning and Management, and he is also an expert in Information Technology and Multimedia. At the age of nine, Nam was selected to join a special program in Mathematics and Physics at the National School for Gifted Students in Vietnam. In 1995, Nam won one of Vietnam’s most prestigious scholarships for study abroad. In 1996, Nam came to Australia’s RMIT University under a scholarship program for students with exceptional academic ability and leadership potential. Nam started his first technology company when he was a final year student at RMIT University in Melbourne.
Nam has been a driving force of Emotiv since co-founding the company in 2003. In 2007, Nam was voted as one of Australia’s Top 10 Digital Entrepreneurs.
www.emotiv.com
Ken Goldstein
Co-founder, Planet Illogica (Los Angeles)
Ken Goldstein’s spirited role in Planet Illogica is best described as “motivationalist”. This is no small task, as Ken reaches out to corporate Alliance Partners with a personal invitation to connect with the Pi community and endeavours. Ken ensures that all creative opportunities are dynamic experiences filled with the spectacle of live performance, high-profile events, productions and global response.
A native of Chicago, Ken is an accomplished filmmaker with several Emmy Awards under his belt. Mr. Goldstein’s professional history includes work with Oprah Winfrey, John Hughes and Barry Levinson, as well as successful productions for A&E Television, HISTORY Channel, BET, FOX and NBC.
An accomplished songwriter and musician, Ken has placed his music in film and television, and performed on stages worldwide.
In 2001 he opened a marketing firm/commercial production company, which eventually led to meeting Tonny and developing a Los Angeles based Artist-in-Residence program, which became the foundation for Planet illogica.
www.planetillogica.com
Zheng Xiaoping
Principal of BAZO and Author of ‘China Creative City’ (Shanghai)
Xiaoping, principal of BAZO, has over 22 years of urban and real estate development related experience of which 12 have been focused on the China market. He is a leader in China’s urban development and renewal. Since establishing Bazo in 2000, has advised 20 of China’s city governments in over 1.400 square kilometres of urban development and large scale infrastructure projects, including the development of brand new hi-tech digital cities.
 

XIaoping’s book Creative China City sets new international standards for urban developments through its emphasis on a balanced process of positioning – planning – promoting – financing. He is a highly sought after speaker at international conferences on China’s investment opportunities. Xiaoping graduated from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (USA) with a professional degree in Architecture. He also serves as the Vice Secretary General of the China Commercial Real Estate Association. He has taught at the China Pudong Executive Leadership Academy where aspiring city mayors learn urban development theory; and at the Harvard GSD Executive Program for institutional investors on China investment. 

www.bazo.com
Jason DaPonte
Managing Editor, BBC Mobile Platforms (London)
Jason DaPonte is Managing Editor, BBC Mobile Platforms. He is responsible for overseeing the content across the BBC’s mobile web, messaging and A/V offerings as well as looking at emerging areas including mobile broadcasting and out-of-home entertainment and information services. He is also Chair of the BBC Future Media Editorial Forum.
Previously, he was Executive Producer for bbc.co.uk, the world’s largest English-language website that covers a range of content from news to entertainment and user generated content. He was responsible for working to shape the overall editorial portfolio and strategy in line with audience needs and emerging technologies.
As part of this work, he led a change programme across the BBC’s online producers called “Ensuring Excellence.” This programme aimed to build a stronger culture of excellence across hundreds of editorial staff in different production areas. It focussed on how editorial standards, guidelines and training need to change in the rapidly changing environment that is digital media. The programme is part of the corporation’s BBC 2.0 initiative, which aims to fundamentally re invent and improve the website over the next three years.
DaPonte originally joined the BBC in 2002 as an editor and has also led the corporation’s efforts in the areas of Search & Navigation, which has resulted in a multi-million pound programme of work in this area being recently kicked off.
Before working at the BBC, DaPonte was Producer of Economist.com where he product managed the website and launched the digital brand into various new editorial areas.
Before moving to the UK in 2000, he worked in New York for CitySeach/Ticketmaster where he managed the design and production of a network of city guide websites and at FOX where he was a web producer and production manager.
His early career began with working on the early versions of a number of major American media sites. He is proud to have been a member of the launch team for WashingtonPost.com and worked on an early site for U.S. News and World Report. He also worked as a consultant and freelancer for a number of small start-up companies during the “dot com boom.”
www.bbc.co.uk
Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin
Director, AlloSphere Research Facility
Professor of Media Arts and Technology and Professor of Music, University of California (Santa Barbara)
Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin is a composer, Professor of Media Arts and Technology and Music, and a researcher in multi-modal media systems, content and facilities design.
She created, built, and designed the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology and is the Center Director since its inception in 1986. Her years of experience in digital media research led to the creation of a multi-million dollar sponsored research program for the University of California, the Digital Media Innovation Program. She was Chief Scientist of the Program from 1998 to 2003. In 1999 she, along with her colleagues, established the Graduate Program in Media Arts and Technology and served as Chair of the Program from 1999 to 2005.
In 2000 she began the creation, design, and development of a Digital Media Center within the California Nanosystems Institute. The culmination of her design is the Allosphere Research Laboratory, a three-story metal sphere inside an echo-free cube, designed for immersive, interactive scientific and artistic investigation of multi-dimensional data sets. She serves as Director of the Allosphere Research Laboratory and Center.
A composer of mixed media works, she received her Ph.D. in 1984 from the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester. Her current music research is focusing on a general-purpose interface for control of digital information through natural performance gesture, and N-dimensional mapping of the time dependent Schrodinger equation, in order to create a quantum visual/aural symphony. A composer of primarily electro-acoustic works, her music has been performed throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.
http://www.allosphere.ucsb.edu
Julian Merceron – Worldwide CTO, Eidos
Julien has worked in the computer games industry for over 16 years.
After studying "Architecturing Microprocessors & Designing Programming Languages", he started as a programmer at Shen in Paris, programming 2 games on the Atari Jaguar in assembly language, and a 3D Engine for Jaguar and PC.
In 1994 Julien joined Ubisoft Entertainment and worked on programming for Rayman and POD. He then became lead programmer on Tonic Trouble. In 1999 after focussing on Rayman 2 and on the R&D for the Playstation 2, Julien became the Worldwide Technical Director of Ubisoft Entertainment. In this role, he focused on Studios creation and organization, technology and production pipeline design, multi-platform strategy, as well as AAA features integration. He also took responsibility for middleware and development strategy, communication and cooperation
strategy, and hardware manufacturers and middleware relations.
At the end of 2005, after having worked on next generation Technology Strategy, Julien saw the opportunity to pursue his career at Eidos, where he currently serves as Worldwide CTO, focusing on the Technology Strategy, the Online Strategy and the Outsourcing Strategy. Julien was also involved in setting up Eidos Montreal and Eidos Shanghai.

http://www.eidos.com
Managing Director of MOB – an Innovation Lab (Sydney)
Rob has been working with cutting-edge technologies since the early 90s and is focused upon creating tangible experiences that change the way you see technology, business and the world around you. MOB create innovative iPhone, Mobile and Internet based Applications and have created Augmented Reality (AR) applications and ARt installations for public display and consumer markets.
MOB’s customers include the Sculpture by the Sea, Sydney Opera House, The Royal Eastershow, IAG, Warner Music and St George to name a few.
Recently MOB have created a Mobile Augmented Reality experience using historic images of Sydney that the Powerhouse Museum released to the Flickr Commons and MOB regularly contribute to the Open Government/Open Data movement in Australia.
http://MOB-labs.com.au