X Media Lab consists of a Pro Day Conference (General Admission) featuring a selection of the world’s outstanding creative practitioners for each Lab’s chosen theme; and the 2-day Lab itself (Selected Companies Only), in which the participants are able to work directly with their selected Lab mentors on their own project ideas, and explore partnerships and business opportunities with all other Lab participants Lab mentors.
Each X Media Lab is a completely unique event where people with original digital media ideas connect with a superb international network of independent creative thinkers, technology wizards, commercialization experts, potential business partners, and potential financial resources. The focus of the Lab is always on you and your idea.
X Media Lab specializes in building high-value professional networks between the emergent creative industries in China, India, the Middle East, and North and South Asia: the new geographies and new media hotspots that have the highest growth markets, the biggest numbers of consumers, the largest youth markets, and the greatest emerging talent pools. We also stage X Media Labs with partners in selected traditional media hotspots including London, Los Angeles, Bath, Malmö and Amsterdam.
The "X" in X Media Lab stands for cross-platform, cross-disciplinary, and cross-cultural.
Please also see our FAQ for further details on how the Lab operates.
Lastly, "X" marks the spot! We look forward to welcoming your participation at any X Media Lab in the time-zone within which we always operate: the near future!
Watch The X Media Lab Experience video here.
BACKGROUND
X Media Lab began at the Sydney Opera House in June 2003. We have now held over 50 XML events in 15 of the world's great digital media cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Mumbai, London, Sydney, Amsterdam, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Seoul, Singapore, Suzhou, Auckland, Wellington, Malmö and Los Angeles.
The Lab has partnered with the Sydney Film Festival, the Asia Media Festival, Broadcast Asia, ICCIE in Beijing, KOCCA in Korea, the Vivid festival in Sydney, the Melbourne International Film Festival, FICCI-FRAMES in India, NPO in Amsterdam, the AFI in Hollywood, and MDeC in Malaysia.
For information about partnering to stage X Media Lab in your own digital media hotspot, please contact info@xmedialab.com.
THE DIRECTORS
Brendan Harkin
Founder and Director, X Media Lab
Brendan Harkin is the Founder and Director of X Media Lab.
Brendan Harkin founded X Media Lab in June 2003. X Media Lab is the internationally acclaimed creative thinktank for digital media professionals that brings together the world's outstanding creatives, executives, and power-brokers who work as mentors with local companies on their own creative project ideas.
X Media Lab focuses on creating high-value networks among the emergent digital media markets of China, India, the Middle East, and North and South Asia; and assisting local companies get their ideas successfully to market by involving them directly with the world's leading digital media practitioners.
Brendan has held a number of high profile positions in new media industry development: founding the first Asia Pacific Multimedia Festival; and as Australia's first General Manager for Public Awareness at the National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) and was awarded an “Australia Day National Gold Medal” by the Australian Government for his services.
Brendan's most recent honours include:
- Awarded the 5th China Creative Industries Award for "International Contribution"
- International Jury Member for the Interactive Emmy Awards held at MIPTV in Cannes
- Appointed “Foreign Expert Advisor” to the Beijing municipal government on Digital Media industry development
- Appointed Visiting Professor to Beijing Culture and Language University
- Consultant to the Suzhou Industrial Park on Animation industry development
- Named as one of the “Top Ten Most Influential People” in the Australian Digital Media industries
- Named as one of the “50 Most Influential Australians in Asia” by the NY-based Advance Organization
- Panellist at the 4th Al Jazeera Media Summit in Doha
- In the past year he has been an invited international speaker at many creative industries events around China including the ICCIE Summit in Beijing, the inaugural "Academic Alliance of International Cultural Industries" at the Communications University Beijing, the Animation Summit in Xi’an, the Creative Industries Forums at Foshan, Shangdong, Wuhu and Shenyang, the Games Forum in Zhonghsan, and the Creative Industries Festival Week in Shanghai.
Brendan combines his involvement in the Digital Media industries with an academic background in philosophy, and was awarded a Doctoral Scholarship by the University of Melbourne where he studied ‘Philosophy and Technology’.
He has consulted to the United Nations Committee on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the European Union’s EUROPRIX initiative, most of Australia’s leading creative industries and media agencies; and has served as an Advisory Board Member to a large number of digital media, cultural, and technology events throughout Asia.
Megan Elliott
Director, X Media Lab
Megan Elliott combines first class cultural, industry, business and political awareness. She is widely recognised as one of the most successful and effective leaders of Australian media in industry development, political representation, and advocacy.
Megan began working with X Media Lab in 2004 and joined the company as a Director in 2006. She has developed and managed over 45 X Media Lab events across Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, India, Korea, China, Malaysia, Amsterdam, London, Sweden and Los Angeles.
Prior to X Media Lab, Megan was the Executive Director of the Australian Writers’ Guild (AWG), the Australian Writers’ Guild Collecting Society (AWGACS), and the Australian Writers’ Foundation.
Megan was most recently named one of Advance Australia's "Leading 50 Women for the Future". She serves as an Advisor to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of NSW; Academic Advisor to the School of Media Technology, Singapore; she has been a nominated judge of the Asia Television Awards (Singapore); a panellist at the 4th Al Jazeera Media Forum (Doha); and she is a regularly invited guest to the AFI Digital Content Lab (Los Angeles); Digital Entertainment Leaders Forum (Hong Kong); ICCIE (Beijing); FICCI-FRAMES (Mumbai); NASSCOM (Hyderabad); IAMAI (New Delhi); Animation Forum (Xi’an); 5D Conference (Los Angeles) and the Shanghai Television Festival (Shanghai).
Megan has previously served as a member of the Policy Research Group of the International Affiliation of Writers’ Guilds; a member of Australia’s UNESCO cultural network; a board member of CREATE Australia; a member of the Australian Screen Council. Megan continues to serve in an advisory role to digital media and creative industry organizations and events across Australia and Asia.
Megan’s background encompasses creative industries development for the European Union; industry development and organising for performing artists; and she herself is a recognised contemporary performance maker, industry writer and theatrical producer.
Jessica Fan
General Manager X Media Lab China (Beijing)
As General Manager, XML China, Jessica spearheads X Media Lab’s activities across the country, including: XML Beijing: Immersive Media; China Animation Market; China Creative Industries eXchange; and the XML China Masterclass series. Jessica is also using her acute business acumen and communication skills to connect people from different industries and countries and bring them together to create new business opportunities within the X Media Lab China platform.
Jessica has over ten years experience in the film, television, animation, mobile and computer games industries. Most recently she was General Manager of Emdigo Inc. and Deputy General Manager at Emdigo China, responsible for the local operation of the China team and delivering world class games projects to the US based company.
Prior to this she was a Creative Director for Emdigo and responsible for the project design and production of SuperGirl 2005 and 2006 for the China Mobile and Nokia platforms in China. SuperGirl was China’s most popular TV show at the time, attracting audiences of up to 280 million each episode and voting via their mobile phones.
Jessica began her career at China’s leading media firms: Beijing TV and CCTV where she worked as an Editor, Assistant Producer and Producer. At CCTV Jessica was the Marketing Manager for some of CCTV’s most popular programs and brands.
Jessica holds a Bachelor degree from Communications University China.
Badhurunnisa Hameed Sultan
General Manager X Media Lab Asia
Badhurunnisa’s (Nisha) humble beginnings started as a programmer over 17 years’ ago and since then she has evolved into multiple roles and gained experiences in the Telecom, Media, Broadcast and IT sector.
Her experiences include her regional roles in management consulting, business strategies development, product management, market development and operations of Telecommunication services, Broadcast interactive services, mobile interactive content services, ICT services and technologies.
Nisha was one of the pioneer team in the development of interactive services in Malaysia’s as the 1st to provide multiple cross media solutions for Internet, Mobile and Interactive TV Interactive Stocks Trading, Polling, Voting, Bill Payment and Presentment, Ticketing, Games, Online Radio & TV Streaming and Information-on-Demand services in Malaysia in 2000. Since then, Nisha pursued her passion in interactive services and cross media platforms projects implementations such as development of the Online Content for Education and Financial Sector, E-Visa, Brunei Eco-Cyber Park, Wireless Hotspots for Schools, Knowledge based Portals for various corporates and International Digital Library projects.
In the recent years, Nisha was also involved in the Interactive Digital Media Industry studies for the Media Development Authority of Singapore and provided insights and recommendations on Interactive Digital Media (IDM), Industry Productivity Study for the Interactive Digital Media Sector in Singapore. Nisha was also involved in development of market and industry roadmaps for the online business and mobile media business for South East Asia market for various SEA telecommunications service providers.
Throughout her career, Nisha also managed regional cooperation and worked with global and regional telecommunication service providers, Media Authorities, various Governments (directly with Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Indonesia) and TMT industry players within SEA. Prior to XML, Nisha was in Deloitte Consulting’s South East Asia for Telecommunications, Media and Technology (TMT) practice in the area of Strategy and Operations.
The journey is more exciting right now than ever before … it is the era of convergence and cross media delivery with innovations and creativity at their peak. As General Manager X Media Lab Asia, Nisha will oversee XML activities in SEA to expand the creative cluster ecosystem across multiple media platforms for SEA Creative Industries, Media Labs and SEA Masterclass Series.