Tim brings a combination of operational, technical and international business experience to Norwest Venture Partners. Tim focuses on investments in mobile, gaming, digital media, and also leads NVP's investment practice in China and Asia-Pacific. Tim was named on the 2011 Forbes Midas List of Top VCs and his venture investments have generated more than $1.3B in M&A exit value. Tim led NVP's investments and serves on the board of directors of Basis, AdChina, PCH International, Lumos Labs, AllReach Media, Brite Semiconductor and 3jam. He also led NVP's investment in Lashou, China's leading deal site, and BranchOut, a career networking application for social networks and social media, as well as in ngmoco (acquired by DeNA) and Playdom (acquired by Disney), two of the premier leaders in social gaming. Tim also works closely with the boards of Treatfeed, SocialVibe, Borqs, deCarta and Veveo.

Prior to joining NVP in 2006, Tim was a principal at Gabriel Venture Partners where he was actively involved in over a dozen wireless-related deals and led Gabriel's investment in Iridigm Display Corporation (acquired by Qualcomm). He also contributed to the boards of Placeware (acquired by Microsoft) and Arula Systems (acquired by Raritan), NextG Networks (acquired by a private equity syndicate), and IPWireless (acquired by NextWave). Tim built Gabriel's wireless sector practice and helped establish business development capabilities through a diverse network of strategic relationships across the mobile value chain, particularly in Asia-Pacific.

Tim currently serves on the advisory boards of the Verizon 4G Venture Forum, the Silicon Valley Telecom Council, MIT/Stanford VLAB, CasualConnect, GamesBeat/MobileBeat, Digital Hollywood, TEDx San Francisco, and Silicon Valley Chinese Wireless Association. He was also featured on the AlwaysON Hollywood IT List recognizing technology leaders in the entertainment industry, and by The Deal as one of five emerging VCs to watch.

Fluent in Mandarin, Japanese, Korean and English, Tim holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar, and an MS in electrical engineering/system engineering as well as a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan. Tim is also an accomplished musician and currently performs with BlackMahal and Coverflow.

A founding member of both The Human League and Heaven 17, Martyn is one of the leading figures in electronic music. As record producer and artist he has featured on recordings totaling over 60 million sales worldwide during a 27 year career to date, working with Tina Turner, Terence Trent D’Arby, Chaka Khan, Erasure, Marc Almond, Mavis Staples and many more.

Martyn founded Illustrious Company with Vince Clarke in 2001 to exploit the creative and commercial possibilities of their unique ‘Heightened Reality’ three-dimensional sound technology and bespoke musical composition in collaboration with fine artists, the performing arts and corporate clients around the world who include: BP, Ogilvy, The British Council, The Science Museum,The Royal Ballet, Amnesty International, The V&A Museum, Mute Records, BBC TV,  the Royal Observatory Greenwich, BAFTA , Museum Of London. Tate Britain, Red Bull Music Academy, City Of Westminster Council, and collaborations with the artists Cathy De Monchaux, Tim Head, Gary Stevens, David Bickerstaff and Philip Tsiaras.

Martyn produces and presents a series of events entitled 'Future of Sound' in the UK and around the world and has created sonic architectural works at the British Pavilion at the Venice Architectural Biennale in 2006 amongst many others.

He also lectures extensively on music production, technology, and creativity at universities and colleges across the world and he is Head of Sonic Experience and co-founder of the world-leading sound-branding agency - SonicID.

Martyn is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, a Visiting Professor at C4DM at Queen Mary College, University of London; a Visiting Lecturer at the Royal College of Art and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Dr. Michael Hawley is an educator, artist and researcher working in the field of digital media. Previously at MIT’s Media Laboratory where he was Director of Special Projects after holding the Alexander W. Dreyfoss chair from 1993 until 2002, Hawley is the founder or co-founder of several major research programs and projects including MIT's GO Expeditions program, Things That Think, Toys of Tomorrow, Counter Intelligence (a culinary research effort), and founder of the nonprofit organization Friendly Planet. 

He was the scientific director of the American Expedition on Mount Everest in 1998, one of the first major scientific expeditions on Everest.

His work at MIT has, in his own words, “sought to creatively stretch digital infrastructures, embedding intelligence into all sorts of artifacts and advancing the web of communications.”

Dr. Hawley's other accomplishments include:

- Worked on the original team that wrote UNIX at Bell Labs.
- Helped develop digital and computer film technology at LucasFilms.
- Worked intimately with Steve Jobs for two years to develop NeXT.
- Pioneer of 'expeditionary technology' - taking the newest technologies into the field to do leading-edge science and education eg: developing the first ever wireless plant sensor network, one of the first self-organising mesh networks.
- The first to produce fine-art quality photographic prints on a very large scale, using digital photographic technology; his photo book of the nation of Bhutan was named the World's Largest Published Book by Guiness World Records.

Dr. Hawley is also a pianist and has played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and YoYo Ma, he is the co-founder of Presto Technologies and serves on the board of Kodak.
 

Kei is the Founder and CEO of Infinita Inc, a multinational mobile research, consulting and development firm located in the heart of Tokyo. His company is one of the very few companies in Japan that covers the 3 business areas all under one roof, consists of a multinational team and possesses in-depth working knowledge of the worlds most advanced mobile market. Their goal is to help clients across the globe create world-class services on connected devices.

Kei was born in New York and moved to Japan in the late 80's. After graduation, he has worked for Panasonic, Lucent Technologies and Cybird, all leading companies in their respective industries. Kei is fully bilingual in Japanese and English, and is a regular keynote at industry events such as the Mobile Marketing Forum (New York, Singapore), Ad:Tech (Tokyo), CommunicAsia (Singapore), Mobile 2.0 (Silicon Valley), Telecom Asia (Singapore) and has spoken in over a dozen countries around the globe.

His passions, aside from work, include playing tennis, snowboarding, travelling, cooking with his wife and collecting mobile devices from around the world. His collection includes the Magic Cap, first generation Sony Clie and Sharp Zaurus.

Infinita clients include Dentsu, DK, Docomo.com, Funai Electronics, IBM, Itochu, France Telecom, Mig33, NetBiscuits, Paypal, Samsung,  Softbank Mobile, Turkcell and many more.

Sey Min is a multi-disciplinary interactive designer, whose interest is in dealing with live data sets in various media formats. She makes projects that reimagine how humans relate to technologies, to societies and cities, and to environments. Combining elements of environmentology, visual art, programming and storytelling, her projects range from building a real time interactive information graphics system for a music club (2007) to proposing a boundlessness open gallery exhibition system (2010). She also worked on developing an ocean pollution cleaning system in response to the effect of oil spills on our lives and ecology. Recently, she worked on the project of 'how to re-define the city' with urban data. She is the founder and organizer of randomwalks.org (www.randomwalks.org), which is half profit/non-profit media art studio in Korea. Her art works have been shown at Ted 2011Art Center in Seoul, Lift conference experience, and have appeared on CNN Asia, Lift09, and aliceOn.net. Sey Min received a M.F.A. in interactive media from Pratt institute, 2004 and recently worked at MIT SENSEable City Lab, as an urban information design researcher.  She is now a TED 2011 fellow.

John is returning to Oz after a 20 year hiatus.  In the late 80s, he first came to Australia as a production executive with DeLaurentiis Entertainment, working on the construction of the company’s Gold Coast production. 

He subsequently helped engineer the sale of the facility to Village-Roadshow, and joined Village as Executive Vice President, Production in Los Angeles, helping cofound Village-Roadshow Pictures with Greg Coote.  In VRP’s initial run, John served as an Executive Producer on the company’s first slate of films, including Blood Oath, Turtle Beach, and The Delinquents.

Through his consultancy, Newspeak Consulting Group, John’s current focus is to develop stronger working relationships between the media/entertainment business and higher education, addressing the challenges of preparing new talent for this rapidly evolving industry in the digital age.  Current clients include Carnegie Mellon University’s Masters of Entertainment Industry Management graduate program, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and the ACME Network, a leading online creative skills mentorship community.

From 2003-2009, John was Head of Show Development at DreamWorks Animation SKG.  During his tenure, John supervised DreamWorks’ early production/prototyping program, expanded the company’s internal Artistic Development program, and founded the successful Academic Outreach program to identify and recruit entry-level animation artists and engineers from leading universities worldwide.  His talent development initiatives helped migrate artists from traditional to digital workflows, and saved the company millions of hard dollars in staffing and productivity costs.

During the ‘80s and early ‘90s, as a production executive and producer, in addition to his work with VRP, he supervised over a dozen movies including Diner, Pink Floyd: The Wall, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and The Year of Living Dangerously for studios including MGM, Orion, Columbia, Warner Bros and New Line.  He co-wrote and co-produced the Playstation game, WarGames, based on the MGM movie, and produced the PC game Big Brother, based on George Orwell’s classic novel, 1984, for which he acquired all interactive rights from the Orwell estate.

From 1996 until 2002, John was the Co-founder and C.E.O. of Talkie, Inc., an internet technology startup that pioneered intelligent conversational animated avatars for online marketing, brand building, lead generation, customer service and training. Clients included Sprint, Intel, and Scottrade.

His speaking engagements include the National Association of Business Economics, Johns Hopkins University, Communications University of China, the Long Beach Community Foundation, the 2010 Autodesk Education Summit at SIGGRAPH, and the Association of Film Commissioners International.  He delivered the 2009 commencement speech at Chicago's Tribeca-Flashpoint Academy.

John has served on the National Policy Roundtable for Americans for the Arts, and on the Chancellor’s Entertainment Advisory Board for the California State University.  As an educator, he serves as an Adjunct Faculty member for Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College of Public Policy, and for the University of Santa Monica.  He blogs for the Huffington Post and Animation World Network on media education and the impact of digital on the media/entertainment sector.

John holds a B.A. magna cum laude from Amherst College, and a M.A. in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica. Raised in New York and Paris, he is a dedicated photographer and an avid cook.
 

Born with the gift of gab, raised with an overdeveloped self esteem, Andy Ellwood works hard to connect Good People with Great Opportunities.  He has been privileged to work with high calibre individuals throughout his career and brings his broad skill set, global network, and unbridled determination to Gowalla as the Director of Business Development.

Gowalla is a social network inspiring people to discover and share amazing places with their friends. People around the world have now visited, commented on and photographed over 2.3 million places in 170 countries with Gowalla. Like a passport on your phone, Gowalla was born out of a desire to share remarkable places and life journeys in a fun, easy and social way. The service was launched in 2009 and is backed by Greylock Partners, Founders Fu nd and Alsop-Louie Partners.

Prior to Gowalla, Andy worked with Marquis Jet, TIGER 21, One Key, and Northwestern Mutual.  Andy lives in New York and thrives on the city that doesn’t sleep. He is frequent speaker at conferences around the world and a contributor to a variety of publications and blogs including his own, www.andyellwood.com. He doesn't slow down much, but when he does he enjoys sipping black coffee, sporting a pocket square, hunting down breakfast tacos, and doting on his girlfriend Annie.

Go with Andy: http://gowalla.com/andyellwood

As one of the pioneers of branded entertainment in China, Mr Zho has helmed several groundbreaking, high-profile projects including Wo Xing Wo Show, China’ first Pop Idol reality show produced in partnership with Universal Music Group and Shanghai Media Group.  This prime time program, now it its 6^th season, has featured major brands Lycra, Coca Cola, Sprite, Dragon Air, Sony Ericsson and Maxwell, and was a huge success for Dragon TV attracting more than 100,000 applicants countrywide and 100 million viewers each season.  The show broke Dragon TV’s rating record and set a new standard for TV programming in China. 

In addition, Mr Zho was instrumental in creating the biggest rock n roll project in Chinese history, Pepsi Battle of the Bands.  With over 1.2 billion RMB in marketing investment from Pepsi, marketing support that included prime time TV commercials across key national TV stations, billions of Pepsi cans exposure, and nearly every large Internet portal and newspaper talking about the project.  Pepsi Battle of the Bands promises to be a catalyst that propels the underground music scene in China into the mainstream.  The show aired on China’s Zhe Jiang Satellite Channel, and consistently ranked in the top 2 highest rated shows on prime time.  In addition with 55+ millions video views on the Internet, 200+ millions of page views on its home page (http://pepsi.sina.com.cn), and thousands of media mentions. 

Other notable projects created by Mr Zho include Teflon Smart Cook, China’s largest online Chef competition that received millions of video views on Sina.com (Http://video.sina.com.cn/smartcook/) and Pepsi Creative Challenge, an online TV commercial script competition that received over 120 million page views over an 8 week campaign period on Netease (http://pepsi.163.com) and is currently running its 5^th season campaign.

Mr Zho graduated with Honors from Brown University and attended NYU Film School.

As Chief Executive and Chief Architect, Chris provides Emdigo with vision, direction, and leadership. Considered one of the world's foremost experts on advanced graphics software architecture, he previously served as founder and Chief Architect at Intrinsic Graphics, where he was responsible for architecture, technology direction, and evangelism of the critically-acclaimed Intrinsic Alchemy™ video game platform.

Chris is the original creator of the product vision and patented technology now known to millions as Google Earth. He was a key performer at Silicon Graphics where he worked on technologies ranging from parallel software architectures to graphics hardware design and verification. While at SGI, Chris also played a crtical role in establishing IRIS Performer middleware as a worldwide standard.

Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Princeton University with a BSE in Computer Science. He is the author of multiple patents issued to both Intrinsic Alchemy and SGI.

Rubedo are an art practice and a think tank founded in London in 2005 by Dr Vesna Petresin Robert and Laurent Paul Robert who have collaborated since 1994.

Vesna trained in architectural engineering and fine art and earned her Ph.D. in 2002 for a dissertation on temporal aspects of composition in architecture, art and music.

She has worked as an artist, theorist, performer and designer.  Having produced international competitions that led to artists taking over military barracks across countries of Eastern Europe, she continued using broadcasting as a medium of radical theory, directing online actions and short TV programmes.  She also worked with Hypersurface Inc, an office for speculative architecture founded at Columbia GSAPP exploring digital design and manufacturing methods (The Moebius House, Hypersurface Interfacing, Hypersurface Architecture: The Age of Electronic Baroque), as well as with contemporary British artists Mark Wallinger and Jane & Louise Wilson.

An academic since 1997, Vesna developed multi-disciplinary courses and has lectured in architecture, visual theory, film and design, most recently at the University of the Arts London and at the University College London.  A research fellow to Cecil Balmond, the Deputy Chairman of Arup since 2003, she produced innovation strategies and co-curated the acclaimed exhibition The Frontiers of Architecture at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, bridging aesthetics, engineering, acoustics and number theory.

Vesna is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Her publications include Power Movement Multiplicity Transformation, Perception of Order and Ambiguity in Leonardo's Design Concepts, Solutions for a Sustainable City, Radicalising the Habitat, award-nominated Dimension of Time in Architectural Composition, and Colour in Visual Culture.  With Laurent-Paul Robert, she published Distructuring Utopias, The Double Moebius Strip, Trans_Form: Form Generation Using Particle Physics and Cybercity - an Urban Matrix of the Information Society.  With Cecil Balmond, she wrote Inform - a manifesto on emergent aesthetics, and is currently writing on Quantum Space and Sound.

About Rubedo

Research and Development
Combining experience in art, architecture, visual theory, music film, games, education, psychology, engineering and IT development, Rubedo also operate as a think-tank providing creative solutions.

Their research and development in adaptive environments, parametric modeling, digital manufacturing, acoustics and bionic design has contributed to patents and projects including Serpentine Gallery Pavilions, Ebbsfleet Landmark, Oscar-winning Hollywood films, AV midi devices and the world's first non-commercial satellite.

Artist Statement

The work of Rubedo crosses disciplinary boundaries, emerging as a single experience integrating sound, form, movement and narrative.

Using cutomised media - cross-modal networks, allows expressing the cross-modal synaesthetic nature of our senses.

The work takes arts outside the 'white cube' experience and explores sound in relation to space, time and user interaction.  It is supported by the technique of multimedia mapping, referred to as harmonography.

Rather than putting together a sum of specialist views, Rubedo aim at connecting senses, concepts and media.  Bridging a variety of disciplines allows us to resolve problems and express ideas at any scale.

Just as Renaissance thinkers were also artists and scientists bringing attention to universally shared humanistic values, so today, in the time after the digital revolution, the role of the artist may also be an innovator, philosopher, engineer, humanitarian and social reformer.

Rubedo have recently featured at Tate Modern, Vienna Secession (Vienna Art Week), Royal Academy of Arts (with Brian Eno and Tom Phillips RA), Royal Festival Hall (with Scanner), Casa da Musica, Venice Biennale, Beijing Biennale of Arcitecture, Cannes International Film Festival and the World Architecture Festival.

Orvar writes for numerous newspapers and magazines, lectures on popular culture and games, and has led a seminar on game culture in Swedish parliament. He is also the producer of video game music concerts, currently holding the world attendance record for a game concert (17 000 at Joystick in 2006). Säfström has a background in film, having twice been voted "Best Swedish film critic of all time" by the readers of leading national newspaper Aftonbladet. From 2003 to 2006 he co-hosted Filmkrönikan on the Swedish television network SVT.

Samuel Seow is the Managing Director of Samuel Seow Law Corporation and is also Foreign Legal Advisor to Seow & Associates.

Samuel’s expertise is in the field of intellectual property law and general commercial and corporate law, and he also has several years of experience in dealing with a wide range of property-related transactions, with a special focus on the application of these laws to the entertainment, arts and media industries. He is a much recognised name in these industries.

Dr. William Cooper is an internationally recognised consultant specialising in the conjunction of the internet and television. The founder of the consultancy informitv, William works with media and technology companies and service providers worldwide to develop business opportunities based on broadband and broadcast convergence. Clients range from start-up companies to major corporations.

As Head of New Media Operations at the BBC, William operationally managed the successful launch and delivery of landmark interactive services on satellite, terrestrial and cable television and oversaw the exponential growth of the BBC online. As Head of Interactive at BBC Broadcast, he went on to lead the transition of interactive playout and publication services into a commercial subsidiary that now operates as Red Bee Media Limited.

Previously, as product manager for the new media division of the Press Association, the national news agency for the United Kingdom and Ireland, William led the launch of online syndication services, leading to the creation of Ananova as a standalone business, subsequently acquired by Orange for £98 million.

William began his career as a broadcast journalist, following a PhD in Communications specialising in video literacy and a degree in English from the University of Leeds in England.

A regular contributor to international conferences as chair, moderator and speaker, with papers published at both the NAB and IBC conventions, William provides thought leadership on the transformation of television. He edits the weekly newsletter Connected Vision, which has become required reading for around ten thousand subscribers worldwide.

Dorothy K. Gordon is a visionary leader in the field of technology and development.  In her capacity as the Director-General of Ghana's Advanced Information Technology Institute, the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE), she leads a team of world-class technology professionals committed to using the opportunities that exist globally to bring development to  Africa. 

The present direction of her work relates to how best ICT can be owned by developing countries.  Her vision is to move Africa from a situation where it consumes technology developed outside the continent and designed for other markets; to where technology consumed in Africa is the result of African innovation that provides solutions for overall socio-economic development.

After obtaining degrees from the University of Ghana and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) of the University of Sussex, UK, she joined the United Nations Development Programme.  Her extensive experience within the United Nations is complemented by work in the private sector and with global civil society organisations.  Her leadership and management responsibilities include implementation of multi-million dollar projects and programmes throughout Africa and in South Asia as well as strategy, change management and evaluation consulting for major companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers. 

Her career as a specialist in international development spans over 25 years.  She has been actively involved in shaping Ghana's Information and Communications Technology scene for close to 20 years. She played a significant role in the drafting of Ghana's media policy and has occupied various positions in corporate governance including as a two-term Board member of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. She is currently a Board member of Film Africa – a production company which along with its sister company, TV Africa, is dedicated to promoting African culture and values. She is a Ghanaian and a Pan-Africanist.

Dorothy Gordon is Chair of the Commission on E-Government for the World IT Forum (WITFOR), President of the Ipv6 Forum Ghana, Board member and Africa Spokesperson for the World Summit Awards, Director, UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA) as well as a member of the Champions network of the UNGAID - UN Global Alliance on ICT for Development.  She sits on various international and national boards focusing on technology, job creation and the achievement of a more favourable environment for women to participate equally in the development process.  She is recipient of a number of international and national awards.

Dorothy speaks both English and French fluently and has lived and worked in over 20 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. 

Chris Winter comes from a long background in new media: as the establishing manager of the ABC’s digital TV service ABC2, interactive TV and multi-platform projects, datacasting and mobile TV trials, and digital TV and iTV free-to-air industry policy groups. His previous life was in radio, on-air and off, and included several years as international marketing manager for an ABC-developed non-linear, multi-user audio editing system sold to some of the biggest radio newsrooms in the world.

In his current role, Chris has been working on projects to deploy ABC current and archive content on a number of platforms including off-deck mobile portals, Google Earth and Google Maps, and developing and managing new relationships with third party content providers, technology research bodies, government agencies and media organisations.

Chris is also managing the ABC’s involvement in a joint venture planning the development of a NSW test bed for Australia’s National Broadband Network, whose establishment was announced earlier this year.

He is a member of the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA), the Music Council of Australia, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences; has contributed to the annual conferences of the Screen Producers Association of Australia since 1999 and been a X|Media|Lab participant since they began in 2003.

In 2004 Chris was the joint recipient of an Australian Recording Industry Association Award for Best Music DVD for his production work on Midnight Oil’s Best of Both Worlds, and was presented with AIMIA’s 2007 Outstanding Contribution Award.

He became a board member of screen development body Metro Screen Ltd early in 2009, and joined the Australian Government’s Information Technology Industry Innovation Council in May.