Ralph Simon is regarded as one of the founders of the modern mobile entertainment industry.  Over the last decade he has been a global trailblazer and innovator, playing a central role in the growth of the global mobile entertainment & content industries.

Dubbed the ‘father of the ring tone’, he and his team created and developed the first ring tones in the USA, Europe, Africa and Australia in 1998.  Simon was the first to advise and guide mobile operators, media & film companies, TV networks, brands, ad agency groups and platform providers worldwide on how to create and grow mobile revenues and content on mobile phones.

Simon co-founded the independent Zomba group of music companies & leading record label, Jive Records in the 1970’s, building them into the music industry’s leading independent music company.   He became the Executive Vice President of Capitol Records and Blue Note Records in Hollywood, where he started  EMI Music’s global New Media division in the mid-‘90s.

Simon correctly predicted that mobile phones would become the indispensable voice/social networking-and-music companion for mobile consumers and their increasingly mobile lifestyles.   Significantly, Simon persuaded US music publishers to embrace this new mobile medium and grant ring tone rights which spurred a whole new mobile entertainment industry in the USA and internationally.  In the late 1990’s he founded the influential Mobile Entertainment Forum – Americas (MEF) for which he now serves as Chairman Emeritus.

In July 2005, Simon was the mobile producer of the Live 8 global concerts working with Sir Bob Geldof, Bono and the Live Aid organization.  Simon was also the mobile producer of the successful Al Gore/Live Earth global event in July 2007.  Mobile Entertainment magazine voted him among the world’s Top 50 executives in Mobile Entertainment in 2005, 2006 and 2008.    In 2007 he received their special award, for his Outstanding Contribution to the global Mobile Entertainment Industry.

In May 2008 he was the global mobile producer of TED Conference’s Pangea Day worldwide event and project.

In 2009 he became the mobile strategy advisor to Irish rockers, U2 and helped create their global partnership with Blackberry to tie in with U2’s highly successful world touring cycle.

He is involved as the mobile producer of the 2010 World Cup "Celebration” music event, which will take place as the kick-off global TV event for the World Cup on June 10th in Johannesburg, and  will feature some of the world’s leading recording stars and launch the global “1 Goal – Education for All” campaign led by Queen Rania of Jordan. 

Simon heads the London-based Mobilium Advisory Group, providing high level strategic advice and guidance on how to create and grow revenues and impact from the usage and distribution of mobile content, messaging, mobile media technology and applications.  He serves on the Advisory Board of the Wireless Life Sciences Alliance 

He is popular as a speaker on mobile phone usage and culture internationally, and recent speaking engagements have  included the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona 2010, as well at major mobile conferences in the USA, Canada, Australia, Spain, South Africa, France, Germany, Norway, Iceland,  India, Israel, Finland & the United Kingdom. 

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Commerce & Manufacture in the UK and a member of the Academy of Recorded Arts & Sciences in the USA.

Amin Zoufonoun joined Facebook in 2011.  Prior to this he was a senior member of Google's Corporate Development team for 8 years where he was responsible for evaluation, negotiating and executing Google's mergers, acquisitions and investments.  He led a number of Google's key strategic acquisitions and investments both in the U.S. and internationally.

Previous to Google, Amin was a practicising attorney, both in-house and at a number of Silicon Valley law firms.  Amin holds a degree in Electrical Engineering as well as a Juris Doctor (law) degree, and is a licensed attorney by the California State Bar.  He has spoken at a number of conferences on topics relating to mergers and acquisitions, investment, corporate finance and valuation, digital media and strategies/exits for startups.

John Penney is Executive Vice President, Strategy & Business Development for Starz, LLC. Penney is responsible for evaluating and building key business strategies, partnerships, and identifying and developing new business opportunities across the family of Starz companies.  John joined Starz in March 2010.

Most recently, Penney was President and Head of Corporate Development of Foresee Entertainment, a media and entertainment company he co-founded with current Starz, LLC President and CEO, Chris Albrecht in 2008.  At Foresee, Penney was responsible for operations and the planning and development of its strategy, expansion efforts and new business platforms.

More recently, Penney served as Head of Global Media Strategy for IMG, Inc., where he was responsible for developing and implementing a new global entertainment strategy, focusing on production and distribution of non-scripted, scripted, and digital programming. Penney was an early proponent of the digital transformation of the entertainment industry.

Prior to that, Penney was with HBO for five years, most recently serving as Senior Vice President, Digital Initiatives, where he oversaw the strategic planning, delivery and operational management of new advertising-supported broadband channels.

Prior to that, as Executive Vice President at ACTV, Inc., he oversaw the development and licensing of technologies and intellectual property for interactive television, personal computer, wireless data and mobile entertainment environments.

Before executive stints at Scient, Inc. and Viacom, Penney spent seven years on Wall Street, both as an equity research analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., Inc. covering the media and entertainment industries, and as a financial analyst in the Media & Telecommunications Corporate Finance group of The Chase Manhattan Bank.

Penney holds a B.A. in Social Psychology from Wesleyan University and a Master’s Degree in Public Policy & Administration, concentrating in Science & Technology, from Columbia University.

Robert Tercek is one of the world's most prolific creators of interactive content.

He has created breakthrough entertainment experiences on every digital platform, including satellite television, game consoles, broadband Internet, interactive television and mobile networks. His expertise spans television,
telecommunications and software.

To design interactive multimedia products, Mr Tercek draws upon a broad range of experience as a television director, game designer, artist, and educator.

Tercek has served in executive leadership roles at major media companies, most recently as President of Digital Media at OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, and previously as Senior Vice President of Digital Media at Sony Pictures Entertainment and earlier as Creative Director at MTV: Music Television. He also co-founded five startup ventures, including 7th Level, Inc., which went public in 1993.

In 2008, Robert Tercek was named a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts in recognition of his effort to advance social progress through media.

S. Joy Mountford has been designing and managing interface design efforts for over 25 years. Currently she is an Osher Fellow at the Exploratorium, where she is working on data visualisations for the new Exploratorium Pier building.

Her experience encompasses a range of innovative and pioneering interface developments on various user systems, including airplanes, PCs, toys, consumer electronics and the Internet. At Yahoo! she was recently V.P. of User Experience and Design and was invited to start an Innovation Team in San Francisco. Her responsibilities included managing UED for Front Doors, where Y! front page is the most visited page on the Internet, and the popular Yahoo Mail, Messenger, Photos, Groups and 360. At Interval Research Corporation she led a series of musical development projects both in hardware and software for musicians and non-musicians to jam. She was the creator and manager of the highly-acclaimed Human Interface Group at Apple Computer for nearly eight years. Joy has worked at MCC, an A.I. computer consortium, and she designed advanced user interfaces for military avionics systems at Honeywell. She started and is still managing the highly leveraged University Design Expo with multiple sponsors, which has now been running for over 20 years. Its legacy members hold influential positions across many design industries.

Wayne Borg is Chief Operating Officer at twofour54, responsible for developing and managing the company's strategic operations. In this role, Wayne is leading twofour54's drive to attract the right mix of established industry-leading and young, innovative organisations to the initiative.

Taking charge of establishing day-to-day operations for twofour54 also involves directing set up of the site's infrastructure and services.

Wayne joined twofour54 in March 2008, bringing extensive knowledge and experience of the global media industry. He has a proven track record of achievement in successfully developing businesses and leading teams spanning Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Russia.

Previously Wayne was Executive Vice President Commercial for Universal Pictures International (UPI), the London-based international division of Universal Pictures. He was responsible for leading all aspects of Universal's commercial activities outside of North America. He has also held senior positions at Warner Bros and Disney.

A native of Sydney, Wayne joined UPI in 2000 as Managing Director Australia/NZ where he successfully transformed the Australasian UPI operation into one of the leading business units within UPI, resulting in market leadership. He returned to London to take up the promotion to Vice President, Latin America & Asia Pacific in 2003.

Under his leadership, growth in these territories significantly increased - in part through an aggressive local all rights film acquisition strategy, its implementation and execution. A further promotion in March 2005 to Senior Vice President saw Southern Europe added to his portfolio of responsibilities as well as being charged with the establishment of UPI's Russian distribution operation, prior to his elevation to Executive Vice President, Commercial, UPI.

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 film-maker, 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 albumsDangerous 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 democratize 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  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.

Steve is a technology entrepreneur and currently serves as a strategic advisor to Animoto, Conduit Labs, RCRD LBL, and StumbleUpon. Previously, he served as CMO and Head of Business Development at imeem (acquired by MySpace) and Director of Digital Development & Distribution at EMI Music.

Founder, Fanshake (London, Paris)

Dana has been at the forefront of digital media and music since 1994 when she co-founded Clockwork, a Stockholm based multimedia agency which built the first music websites for artists (Sony, RCA).

In May 1996 Dana co-founded Yahoo! Europe, built the Yahoo! Europe production team and managed the European local territories.

In 2002 as Biz Dev Director at Bruce Dunlop & Associates, Dana managed the launch, programming, rebranding, and scheduling alignment of Sky Italia, MBC, ITV, and in 2006 she was awarded the World Gold Promax award.

In 2005 Dana founded the label LostRecords, managed, produced artists and worldwide tours for artists such as Chris Stills, Paul Personne, Louis Bertignac and Youssou NDour, Mark Ford. Marketing was 100% digital, LostRecords was selling 200 cds per concert.

Dana is now Founder of FanShake, a platform of tools for music fans, which rewards fans for the amount of promotion they create around an artist. Fans can demand concerts, participate in contests, discover artists, play games, create and manage fan clubs, and receive exclusive offers on live events. Labels are able to understand exactly who their fans are, build targeted marketing campaigns, enhance their content and give visibility to top fans. Concert promoters, ticketing services, and producers better understand their public, increase direct sales and effectively reduce marketing costs.

 

Co Founder, CEO & Managing Editor of AnimationXpress.com (Mumbai)

AnimationXpress.com is the internationally acclaimed Animation, VFX, Gaming information portal and Business2Business company.

Anand is thoroughly networked with a 1000+ studios across India, China and the Asia Pacific and with an equal number of content buyers, distributors and outsourcing studios from the US & Western Europe. He also loves writing and traveling and is currently developing four children focused Intellectual Properties that will reach children across the globe in 2010.

Parmesh Shahani's first book - Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India (New Delhi, London, Los Angeles, Singapore: Sage Publications) was released in April 2008. He is based in Mumbai where he serves as an Editor-at-Large forVerve magazine.

He is also affiliated with the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium, a think tank that explores how corporations can understand and profit from the changing media landscape. In the past, he has founded Freshlimesoda.com, India's first online youth magazine, and worked across the Indian media and corporate landscapes in digital media, venture capital and innovation at organizations like Elle, the Times of India group, Sony Entertainment Televisionand Mahindra.

Scott Halcomb is the Head of International Business Development atSystemK in Japan. He is responsible for discovering and localizing foreign technologies, turning great ideas in great businesses.

Currently, Scott leads SystemK's content development for Layar, the Augmented Reality Browser. Clients include Recruit (Japan's largest restaurant search), Home's (Japan's largest real estate company), and the Hiroshima Peace Park.

Prior to working with SystemK, Scott was a researcher of Japanese mobile marketing trends at Hokkaido University. He is passionate about emerging mobile technologies and actively researches their impact.

Scott holds fluency certification in Japanese and currently lives in Sapporo.

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.

Haidong Pan, Ph.D., is founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer ofHudong.com Inc. Under his excellent leadership, www.hudong.com has grown to be the largest and most influential wiki-enabled “Knowledge Media” where over one million contributors have collectively edited three million articles.

The company’s product, HDWiki, the first open source Chinese wiki software, dominates with 90% market share in China. Before that, Dr. Pan served as Chief Information Officer (CIO) with AsiaEC.com (now Office Depot China), the largest online e-procurement office supplies company in China. While studying in Boston University, Dr. Pan acted as co-president of Harvard China Review and organized its annual conference that attracted mainstream media in both US and China. Besides that, the MIT talent forum he organized as conference chair stirred the returning enthusiasm among overseas Chinese students and scholars.

Mr. Pan obtained Ph.D. in systems engineering from Boston Univ., M.S. from Tsinghua Univ., and B.S. from Beijing Science & Technology University. He also joined the "Advanced History Studies Program" in Dept. of History, Peking University.

Dr. Pan is a frequent speaker at ad:tech, CHINICT, iResearch, AAMA and other events. Dr. Pan is the “Cradle Plan” entrepreneur with Asia America Multi-technology Association (AAMA). Dr. Pan is a council member of All-China Youth Federation and committee member of Overseas Returnee Association ACYF. Dr. Pan currently serves as vice chairman with Boston University Alumni Association China.

Nick Yang is one of China’s most successful digital media entrepreneurs.

Nick builds platforms and content that are used by hundreds and millions of people in China – every day of their lives. At 34 he is starting his third company.

Nick Yang graduated from Stanford University, master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1999. 

Nick is the Co-Founder and Non-Executive Vice Chairman of KongZhong, China’s leading mobile internet company and provider of mobile interactive entertainment, media and communities.  Since founding the company in May 2002, Nick has served as President, and CTO.  The company listed on NASDAQ (KONG) in July 2004. Partnering with China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom and China Netcom, KongZhong provides various wireless value-added services to China's mobile phone and fixed-line phone users. 

Prior to co-founding KongZhong, Nick was the Vice President and CTO of Sohu.com  - China’s premier online brand encompassing search and China’s leading network of entertainment, social media and web 2.0 products.

In June 1999, Nick co-founded ChinaRen Inc – China’s leading online community site for young people.  ChinaRen was bought by Sohu for $35 million of Sohu Stock.

Today, Nick is building Wukong.com (Monkey King Search Limited) – a brand new start-up focussed on conceptual search and intent on becoming Baidu’s No. 1. competitor. Wukong.com is a leading business search engine, service-based high-technology companies.  Its main products are "Wukong Search". Since inception, we have been focused on search engine R & D. “Wukong Search”  has become the most professional one of the wireless search engine sites in China.