Michael is one of the world’s leading authorities on media arts and research and development. He was on the original design team for the MIT Media Laboratory, and was a founding member of the Atari Research Lab, the Apple Multimedia Lab, and Lucasfilm Interactive (now LucasArts).

Michael Naimark is a media artist and researcher who often explores "place representation" and its impact on culture.  He has served as faculty in the  USC School of Cinematic Arts' Interactive Media Division (2004 - 2009), the NYU Tisch School of the Arts' Interactive Tele-communications Program (2009 - current), and the MIT Media Lab (2011 - current); and the Board of Directors of ZERO1 San Jose, the Editorial Board of Leonardo, and the Scientific Council of the Boltzmann Institute for Media Arts Research in Linz; and has been a member of the Society for Visual Anthropology since 1984.



A longtime media artist and researcher, Naimark is expert in "place representation” and has made interactive "moviemaps" of Aspen from the street, Paris from the sidewalk, San Francisco from the air, Karlsruhe from the rail, Banff from hiking trails, and stereo-panoramic movies in Jerusalem, Dubrovnik, Angkor, and Timbuktu. His work is an unusual combination of optimism and activism, for example, it currently ranks #1 on Google searches for both VR webcams and camera zapper. Naimark was instrumental in the founding of several world-renown research labs and his art projects exhibit internationally.



Naimark was on the original design team for the MIT Media Laboratory in 1980 and was a founding member of the Atari Research Lab (1982), the Apple Multimedia Lab (1987), and Lucasfilm Interactive (now LucasArts, 1989). He joined Interval Research Corporation, a long-term lab funded by Paul Allen, as it opened in 1992, and worked an additional year after it closed in 2000 on Kundi.com, a web video spinoff venture. Patents for his work have been granted from 1989 on, with several more currently pending.



Naimark's art projects are in the permanent collections of the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and the ZKM | Center for Arts and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. His 3D interactive installation "Be Now Here," produced by Interval with the cooperation of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, toured in the ZKM's "Future Cinema" exhibition in 2002 and 2003.



Naimark was the 2002 recipient of the World Technology Award for the Arts and the 2003 recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation grant to direct a feasibility study for a unique, financially sustainable Arts Lab. In 2004, he taught the first “History of New Media” class at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, taught the first graduate thesis seminar at USC’s Interactive Media Division, and helped Columbia University write its strategic plan for art and technology. He also guest curated the Ars Electronica 25th Anniversary Symposium in Linz, Austria, themed “The World in 25 Years.” In 2005, the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena organized a 20 year survey of Michael Naimark's work.



In 2006, Naimark initiated a USC research project to explore ways of democratizing Earth mapping and modeling. In 2007, the project received a Google research award, and in 2008, the results were published online. The project, called Viewfinder, was well-received by the press, on blogs, at USC, and at Google. Along the way, he also coined the phrases "Google Jockey" and "Google Feeling Lucky List."



In 2009, Naimark was Project Director of "80+1: A Journey Around the World" for Linz09, the European Union Culture Capital. For it, Naimark initiated a unique open competition called "Live Bits: Art Exploring Real-time Connectedness" which received 295 proposals from 42 countries, from which 15 were selected for exhibition. In Fall 2009, he taught a new class at NYU ITP called "Representing Earth".

Michael is an International Speaker and Masterclass Mentor at KR8V Masterclass Series: Creative Leadership Edition.

Kenneth Hertz is a Senior Partner in the Beverly Hills law firm of Hertz and Lichtenstein LLP.  Ken and his partners specialise in representing talent and new media companies in the sports and entertainment industries. 

The firm's clients include Will, Jada Pinkett, Willow and Jaden Smith, No Doubt, Gwen Stefani, The Black Eyed Peas, will.i.am, Keith Richards, Herbie Hancock, Jason Mraz, Britney Spears, Janet Jackson, David Blaine, Shaun White, Wayne Gretzky and Alex Rodriguez.  Prior to joining the firm, Ken was in charge of music - business and legal affairs - for the Walt Disney Company.

Ken is also a principal in Membrain - an entertainment marketing and strategy consulting firm.  Membrain consults a number of firms engaged in businesses operating in the entertainment content, fashion, technology and marketing industries (Membrain's clients include JibJab, BigChampagne, Hasbro Toys, McDonald's, Intel, MillerCoors, and Coty.)

Ken is a frequent speaker and commentator on the subjects of entertainment, marketing and convergence, is often quoted in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal, has appeared on CNBC's monthly newsmagazine Business Nation, and has been an instructor at UCLA's Anderson Graduate School of Management, and an adjunct professor of law at USC.

Shinta Dhanuwardoyo is a pioneer of Indonesia's digital landscape and is recognised by Globe Asia as one of the 99 Most Powerful Women.

She is the Head of Permanent Committee for Online and Print Media at The Indonesian Chambers of Commerce and Co-Chair for Indonesia Mobile Marketing Association. She is a managing partner at Nusantara Venture, a pioneering technology venture capital fund in Indonesia aimed at helping entrepreneurs create and grow market-leading digital media companies throughout South East Asia.

Earlier this year Dhanuwardoyo organised Indonesia’s largest digital event IDBYTE, inviting world-class speakers from the industry giants such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and EBay.

In 1996 she founded Bubu.com – one of the first internet companies in Indonesia which has since evolved into the country’s leading digital media agency engaging with internet, social media and mobile strategies. Bubu was recently acknowledged by Red Herring as one of Asia’s TOP 100 Most Innovative Companies.  At its essence, Bubu believes in the concept of storyability - one idea, one story that every digital campaign has to have in order to rise in people’s mind, gives a genuine experience and be the talk of the town.

Prior to joining Nusantara, Dhanuwardoyo was the CEO of a Telkom Group subsidiary that focuses on the most trusted and biggest e-commerce portal in Indonesia, plasa.com. 

Ian Charles Stewart supports commercial & social entrepreneurs in Media, Sports, Entertainment, the Arts and Education.   He is currently Executive Chairman of Piech Asia Enterprises, a private sector creative business incubator and Chairman of social venture Khunu Limited, a Fair Trade producer of Mongolian Yak Wool luxury sports garments.

Before arriving in China in 2006, Stewart was a successful entrepreneur and investor in the media and technology sectors.   From 1988 to 1992 he was fund manager of Pearson plc’s Media Development Fund based at Lazard Ventures.   In 1992 he co-founded WiReD Magazine, the hugely successful technology lifestyle publication.   Stewart was also founder and chairman of the UK based local community information business UpMyStreet Ltd, and a co-founder of the late Douglas Adams’ digital entertainment company, The Digital Village.   As Chairman of Aztec Internet Limited in the late 1990s, Stewart was an advisor to the BBC, the Financial Times, GUS plc, Vodafone plc, and a number of leading financial institutions, on the business changes being wrought by the Internet.   In 2000 Stewart became managing director of NM Rothschild’s UK venture capital company, and in 2002 Chairman of SevenPeaks Capital.

For many years Stewart has been a guest speaker, mentor and judge to students in venture capital, social entrepreneurship and commercial entrepreneurship programmes at London Business School.   He is a Visiting Professor and Enterprise Board member of the University of the Arts, London.   He was a founding member of the Advisory Board for the Centre for Creative Business at London Business School and is a Founding Fellow of the 21st Century Trust.   For 15 years Stewart was also a trustee of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

Before spending the last twenty-five years building and financing creative businesses and social enterprises, Stewart spent ten years working in book and magazine publishing.  He is the photographer and author of award winning books on Indonesia and Singapore.  Stewart speaks English and French, gets by in Indonesian and Mandarin Chinese, holds an MBA (with distinction) from IMD in Switzerland.

Gerry Gouy is the New York-based Global Senior Business Development Director for MTV Networks International, the world's largest television and mobile video network.

He is responsible for global distribution deals and partnerships (200+ deals in 100+ countries) across every country outside the United States, and across every digital platform including TV VOD, Online, Mobile, Applications, and across all MTV Networks global brands and properties including MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, South Park, The Daily Show, the MTV Europe Music Awards & SpongeBob SquarePants.

Gerry joined MTV Networks in 2006 after six years of driving content partnerships in TV, Music, Sports & Gaming at 3Mobile in Asia & Europe. Prior to that he worked as General Manager of ZDNet Australia, and held a number of senior roles at AltaVista & Yellow Pages, going back to the dawn of the Web in the mid 1990s.

He has over 14 years' worldwide digital media commercial, marketing and operational experience (including ten years' mobile) and detailed understanding of business, marketing and partnership models across all major digital platforms for: broadcast media; mobile operators and applications; online; social networks; brand licensing; music industry; and device manufacturers.

During his career, Gerry has lived and worked in Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia and North America and has been responsible for digital media content deals in these territories which have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars in direct revenues, partnering with a diverse range of media, technology & communications companies such as Sky, Universal Music, Apple iTunes, China Mobile, Canal+, Google, Vodafone, Paramount Pictures, NTT DoCoMo, Microsoft XBox and the BBC.

Dubbed “the Oprah of the Web”, Corvida ranks among the 20 Most Influential People in Social Media.

Corvida’s passion is rooted in helping people understand technology - Corvida talks tech in plain English to everyone who wants to learn.  She has served as TED’s Conversations Community Catalyst, an Intel Advisor, toured the US as a Social Media Specialist for General Motors, served as a technology writer and community manager for ReadWriteWeb and FastCompany.

She founded the blog shegeeks.net, which is ranked in the Top 100 Social Media, Internet Marketing and SEO Blogs, and she has been nominated by Fast Company as amongst The 50 Most Influential Women in Tech, and a Social Media Curator to Watch. 

Corvida was nominated by Glamour Magazine as amongst their 21 Amazing Young Women of 2011; and Time Magazine’s Techland Blog nominated Corvida’s Facebook Profile amongst the 25 Facebook Profiles You Should Subscribe to Right Now.

Corvida is a co-founder of the Search & Social Award Winning Everything Twitter, and The SocialGeeks Roundtable Podcast.  Her art, fashion and music blog is In A Third Place

Rajiv is an emerging markets business development professional with a twenty year career that tracks India’s liberalization journey since 1990.  His expertise lies in agile yet disciplined development of nascent opportunities, often in ambiguous environments, into market leading businesses. 

He has developed businesses and capabilities for Cisco, KPMG, Future Group (India’s leading retailer) and Andersen in sectors such as eCommerce, technology-enabled services, business consulting and merchant banking.  During this process, he has held P&L responsibilities for B2B and B2C businesses, built winning teams, acquired and integrated businesses, raised capital, and marketed and delivered solutions to clients in US, Europe, APAC and India.  As a management consultant, his focus has been working with senior leaders in financial services, retail, utilities and technology on topics of strategy, organization, global operating models,sector reform and performance improvement.

His present focus is entrepreneurship development and eCommerce. He presently mentors a portfolio of fast-growing start-ups that are emerging leaders in eCommerce platforms, solar-powered lighting and retail distribution, ethnic food services, multilingual solutions on mobile devicesand marketing services. He assists the firms in scaling up their business and organization and also mentors the founders. He is also engaged in domestic and cross-border partnership initiatives to develop support systems and resources for start-ups in India. 

In his previous role, he developed businesses for Future Group in three sectors – eCommerce, retail technologies and services and coalition loyalty.  In these roles, he reported to the Group’s founder, Mr.Kishore Biyani, a first generation entrepreneur, credited as the “father of modern retail in India”. Rajiv, as CEO of the eCommerce venture, co-funded by Kleiner Perkins and Sherpalo, relaunched the business with many innovations and grew revenues by 9x to take the business to a top 3 position in industry. In another Group role and just moving in from Cisco, he co-founded India’s first retail technologies and services venture and grew business to $25mm in revenues and 1000+ team in 2 years and spun off the business into a JV with a leading international firm.  He also developed a coalition loyalty business which resulted in a joint venture with American Express’ Payback.

Rajiv has ten years of strategy and operations consulting experience and has developed and led practices at Arthur Andersen, KPMG and Cisco’s strategy consulting arm – Internet Business Solutions.  In all these roles, through CXO-level, business consulting engagements, Rajiv developed valuable new geographical and industry markets for professional services and networking solutions. At KPMG, through stints in India and UK, Rajiv also helped build global sourcing advisory practices in India, UK and US. 

He commenced his career in merchant banking and has assisted several Indian businesses mobilise capital from public markets. During this phase, Rajiv co-founded a corporate finance start-up as an entrepreneur where he learnt lessons from rapid initial success and subsequent failure. 

He is a regular speaker at technology, eCommerce and retail industry forums and has conducted influential studies for the Ministry of IT in India and the Indian software industry association.   

Rajiv is a commerce graduate from the Bombay University and holds a post-graduate diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. 

Steffen is a Vice-Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow at RMIT University. He is the founder--director of RMIT's Games & Experimental Entertainment Laboratory as well as the director of RMIT's GEElab Europe in Stuttgart, Germany. 

Steffen is an award winning game and interaction designer, an internationally recognized scholar and book author, a business consultant and an entrepreneur with a background in computer aided architectural design, cultural anthropology, creative web direction, TV satire writing, entertainment media production as well as attempted pop music stardom.

Steffen earned his doctoral degree from the ETH Zurich in Switzerland, having researched the future of games and game-like activities across spaces and media. In 2008, he went on to form the company sreee, which had acquired seed funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation as well as business angel funding from Zurich investors, to create a cross-platform middleware for mobile games.

Not only has Steffen been creating several pioneering projects, e.g. the first urban exploration game service for tourists; or the first gamified website that can be navigated by playing arcade games; or the first musician’s website to offer end customers the possibility to “pay what you like” at  in 2004. Steffen has also been providing strategy and design consulting with regards to game thinking and serious games to clients such as Nokia, Audi, Sony Ericsson, the United Nations Population Fund (cf. http://www.breakawaygame.com), Flims Laax Falera Tourism, the Swiss Federal Office for Professional Education and Technology, the Zurich University Clinic and the MFG Baden-Württemberg, the German state’s public innovation agency for IT and new media. In the fields of Online marketing as well as E-commerce, in the past 12 years, Steffen has been consulting and designing e.g. for Daimler, HypoVereinsbank, major mobile telephony provider O2, German state television ZDF, Payback (the most successful German loyalty program) as well as for the German Greens, Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen.

Steffen has been invited to lecture and keynote about his practice and writings at the MIT, Harvard, Georgia Tech, Parsons The New School for Design, Tsinghua University Beijing, IT University Copenhagen, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg and many other schools, and he has spoken at numerous conferences such as the Game Developers Conference, the Serious Games Summit, DiGRA, Quo Vadis / Deutsche Gamestage, FMX and LIFT.

He is co-editor of "one of the books of the year 2007" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), "Space Time Play. Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level" and author of "Toward a Ludic Architecture. The Space of Play and Games", published by the ETC Press, an open source publisher affiliated with the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. 

Steffen enjoys playing music, playing games and playing playing.

Anuraj has worked in the mobile telecommunications industry for over 2 decades across several parts of the mobile value web and devices ecosystem including leading Mobile Network Operators, Device Manufacturers, R&D Centres, International Trade Bodies, Consultancy Firms, VAS Developers/Providers, Wireless Technology Retail and Network Solution Vendors on 4 continents - Australasia, North America, Europe & Asia.

He has worked from hands-on technical roles to senior executive management positions and is regarded by many as an industry visionary. Companies he has worked for include: NASA/JPL, SingTel Optus, Logica/Aethos, T-Mobile, Orange, GSM Association, Sharp, Siemens/BenQ mobile, Spice & Ericsson. He has spearheaded several innovations in the advanced as well as grass-root level mobile domain in mature and emerging markets. He focuses his efforts on strategic business development and nurturing breakthrough concepts leading to game changing and disruptive/radical innovation.  

He has an honours degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering with specialization in Telecommunications from the University of NSW (Australia), a micro-eMBA from Oxford (UK) and also completed an executive leadership excellence program from ISB (India).

He is a valued advisory board member of several organizations globally, currently mentoring various start-ups and has been actively involved in the evolution of key mobile standards. Several ideas he conceptualized are now global standards. Some of his key contributions include coming up with the idea of NITZ – Network Identity & Time Zone ETSI standard, COW (Cell-on-Wheels)using satellite transmission for rapid network deployment anywhere (implementing a complete GSM network in a ‘shipping container’), Universal Charging/Data Connector for mobile devices global standard, instrumental in launching the first integrated camera-phones outside of Japan packaged with a leading operator based mobile data solution (Sharp GX-10 with Vodafone Live!), launching the first true blue laser micro-drive based Movie phone (with Vmedia), conceptualized Apps and holistic concepts in the Mobile Wellness convergence domain which he presented to H.H. Dalai Lama and got very positive feedback. He has been a key advisor and also helped evangelise the world’s lowest cost indigenous mobile tablet (‘Aakash’) launched as a LCAD (Low Cost Access Device – project ‘Sakshat’) aimed essentially for education. Also presently leading a project on designing (from scratch) a game changing ‘tablet type’ device for emerging markets.

He has been honoured with numerous innovation awards both on the personal front and for products he helped develop and bring to market (e.g. Sharp GX10 for most innovative handset by GSMA at MWC in Cannes, Siemens SK65 with integrated BlackBerry/twister keyboard form-factor & one of the first Augmented Reality apps - a game called Mozzies and a real time language translation app).

He has published several articles, has been a frequently invited speaker to a variety of international forums/conferences, judging global innovation competitions, spearheaded innovation showcases and featured on several prominent Television shows. Anuraj is an adjunct faculty member and lecturer at NU (NIIT University) in India which has a unique focus on Innovation learning and he is helping with development of applications for E/M-learning technologies. He is passionately nurturing a holistic set of ideas and concepts on “wireless meets wellness”. An example is a ‘spiritual’ mobile device with sensoric interaction that harnesses mind power.

He believes in driving Innovation and ‘Simplexity’ (a term he coined a decade ago) to optimize the value proposition and enable clear end user benefits via quality solutions deploying strong use cases with relevant user scenarios. An area close to his heart is building foresight and nurturing future product and solution ideas/concepts e.g. 2020 where several new categories of devices and embedded m2m modules (Internet of Things) will prevail.

He has been promoting innovation as a mindset (more so a ‘heartset’) along with the need for a well structured and systematic innovation management process. Core to this is an open innovation philosophy (and integral to pre-strategy) where ecosystem collaboration (‘collabovation’) and co-creation with stakeholders will be key in getting the right impact with speed and success. He is known for sparking, dreaming/incepting, design thinking and incubating new ideas. He strongly believes and involved in trend scouting, ethnographic research & experimentation using rapid prototyping methodology so we can ‘fail faster to succeed sooner’. He has extensive experience transforming blue-sky research and strategy into near term tangible products and services. He is a strong promoter of ESP (Emotional Selling Propositions) in addition to USP and applying story-telling as a key constituent to innovation marketing.

He has spearheaded development of global innovation centres/hubs (polycentric innov.) for co-creation of novel solutions, building innovation strategy/roadmap with multiple stakeholders from R&D, Academia, Vendors, Customers, VCs, etc. devising new ecosystems and business models. He is passionate about developing frugal innovations for helping bridge the digital divide (transforming it into digital opportunities) and empower under-privileged communities using ICT.

Warren Coleman was the co-writer/director on the Academy Award winning animated feature film Happy Feet, and co-writer on Happy Feet 2.  He has a distinguished careers as a writer, director, content provider, and performer.

His latest project is a feature length screenplay based on Linda Jaivin's highly praised comedic novel The Infernal Optimist, which he’s co-writing with Australian comedian Stephen Abbott.  He and Stephen are also writing a feature film based on Barbara Moran's book The Day We Lost the H-Bomb.

A graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Coleman has written for film, television, radio and print.  He believes that making films is ‘a painstaking process with many layers and attention to detail - you have to surround yourself with people who share the same passion and integrity to get it right'.

Coleman’s film and TV credits include Red Star which was short listed for the New York Dramatists Playwright Awards and The Castanet Club - A Movie You Can Dance To. His theatre credits include The Man Who Sued God, Bad Cop Bad Cop and Judy Davis' Sydney Theatre Company production School For Scandal.  His directing credits include Jack, Buzz in which he also starred, Tall Dog and the Under Poppy, Effie....Just Quietly, The Venetian Twins and Associate Director on the hit show, Rent.

Bonnie is an expert at making meaningful connection between people, place, technology and play to catalyze massively collaboratively civic innovations for tangible real world impact.

As the Director of Strategy at iStrategyLabs, Bonnie manages a team of talented creative strategists to deliver exceptional projects to some of the worlds most respected brands and organisations, including Disney, Microsoft, Intel, GE, Nasdaq, Audi, Volkswagen, PBS and NPR.

Bonnie is a serial social innovator. She is the founder of the global photographic treasure hunt and community engagement game Snap-Shot-City, a ground breaking digital storytelling event played by 1000’s of people in 100’s of cities around the world.  She is the Founder and Dean of the DC chapter of The Awesome Foundation – a global organization of micro funded philanthropy that catalyzes community innovation by providing $1000 micro-grants every month for awesome projects, and a co-creator of the 24 Hour City project – a community sourced experiment in hacking the city and temporary urbanism.

Bonnie is sought after as a speaker and workshop facilitator with specialties in creative communities and civic innovation, the future of cities and technology, online/offline community engagement, serious gaming and digital storytelling, and capacity building and change management. She has 10 years of international experience in Australia, the UK and the USA.

She was recently honoured as a Fellow of the RSA.

Mark is an inventor, author, educator, broadcaster and entrepreneur.  In 1991 he founded Ono-Sendai Corporation, the first consumer virtual reality startup, inventing a sensor (US Patent 5526022) for low-cost virtual reality applications, adopted by Sega Corporation for their Virtua VR head-mounted display. 

In 1994 Pesce co-invented the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), the first standard for 3D graphics on the World Wide Web.  While chairing the VRML Architecture Group, a consortium of industry and academic stakeholders furthering VRML standards development, he founded BlitCom, the first startup to use VRML to deliver streaming entertainment.

Pesce has written five books, including VRML: Browsing and Building Cyberspace and The Playful World: How Technology is Transforming Our Imagination, which used toys such as Furby and PlayStation to explore our interactive future.

In 1998, Mark was invited to found the Graduate Program in Interactive Media at the University of Southern California’s world-famous School of Cinema-Television, teaching the next generation of creative professionals how to master emerging technologies for storytelling. In 2003, Mark was invited to Sydney to establish the Emerging Media Program at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, and continues to work with students through his Honorary Appointment in the Digital Cultures Program at the University of Sydney.

For  seven years, Pesce was a panelist and judge on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s hit series The New Inventors, celebrating Australia’s newest inventions and inventors. A highly-regarded speaker, Pesce entertains and informs audiences on the future of technology, media, government, health care, and education, and is a regular guest on host James Valentine’s ABC 702 radio program.  Pesce’s articles about technology and culture are regularly published in NETT magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, ABC’s The Drum, and ABC’s Technology & Games.

Mark has published six books, including The Playful World: How Technology is Transforming Our Imagination, examining the world of intelligent objects - observations which led directly to MooresLights. For seven years he served as a panelist and judge on the ABC’s hit series The New Inventors, and is a frequent commentator in technology matters on television and radio.

Active in the startup community, Mark currently advises educational startup TeacherTime, judges and mentors at Startup Weekend events in both Melbourne and Sydney, and serves as a Grand Judge at the annual LAUNCH conferences.

Arvind is the principal at Slingshot, a film company that he co-founded in 2006. Variety has called Slingshot "one of the most innovative players on the U.K. production and distribution scene".

Arvind  has produced five films there – most recently 2010's hit Muslim-Jewish comedy The Infidel, which has now spawned a Bollywood remake; a musical theatre version and a  US TV spin-off of which is in development at NBC, all of which have Arvind as an Executive Producer. 

Other notable current projects include The Fortunate Son for Exclusive Media; Silent War for Intrepid Pictures; and The Ghost Map based on the Steven Berlin Johnson's best seller for BBC Films.   As a writer, Arvind co-wrote the stage-show Dirk (based on the Douglas Adams character Dirk Gently) which won 3 prizes in the LA Weekly Theatre Awards 2007; and has several other theatre projects in development with producers on Broadway and London.

Outside Slingshot, Arvind is a guest lecturer at universities including The National Film & Television School and the London Business School, he regularly contributes to the trade press and frequently attends conferences around the globe as a keynote speaker. Arvind was also on the British Screen Advisory Council from 2009 - 2011. 

Anita is an Innovation Consultant at How to Impact; Founder of the award winning ‘We Are ULTRA’ sustainable collective, ‘ENTER’ performance art experiment and ‘SHE EATS HERE’ online and offline platform.

Anita has experience across China, South East Asia, the US, Australia, Afghanistan and Europe with clients that include Nike, the Red Cross, Nokia, GAP, BMW, Canon, Converse, Westfield, Bayer, UHCR, LOHAS, MATRADE and Shisheido.

We Are ULTRA is a sustainable design collective that organize projects and events across the world.  World leaders in Eco-Fashion, their internationally acclaimed  ULTRA 10 Conscious Fashion Initiative was awarded the Innovation Award 2011 at the Ethical Fashion Forum UK.  In the words of Treehugger: ‘Merging the ultimate duo: sustainability and style.  We Are ULTRA is cutting edge fashion with an eye toward innovative design.’  ULTRA 10 has also been featured in Fast Company’s Co.EXIST as a world changing idea and innovation.

ENTER is Anita’s ongoing experiment seeking to nurture a more intimate experience of performance. Using interdisciplinary performance and modified on-ground and digital environments – ENTER aims to remodel the performer-audience dialogue.  ENTER #1 was part of the 2011 JUE Festival in Shanghai.

SHE EATS HERE! is an online and offline platform celebrating great women eating and where they do it.  SHE EATS HERE! promotes exuberance between women, food and themselves.

Steve Baty, principal at Meld Studios, has over 15 years experience as a design and strategy practitioner. Steve is well-known in the area of strategy and design, contributing to public discourse on these topics through articles and conferences.

Steve serves as President of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA); is a regular contributor to UXMatters.com; a contributor to Johnny Holland (johnnyholland.org), and is the founder of UX Book Club – a world-wide initiative bringing together user experience practitioners in over 80 locations to read, connect and discuss books on user experience design. Steve is co-Chair of UX Australia – Australia’s leading conference for User Experience practitioners; and Chair of Interaction 12 – the annual conference of the IxDA for 2012.

Steve has, over the past six years, led design-driven strategy and innovation projects for clients across a broad spread of industries including: financial services, tourism, travel, transport, consumer electronics, manufacturing, government, and the arts.

Steve holds post-graduate degrees in electronic commerce (M.Ec) and business administration (MBA) from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management; and a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics (Physical Mathematics & Applied Statistics) from UTS.
 

Helen is Founder and CEO of China’s first Museum of Digital Arts (CMoDA). CMoDA opened in December 2011 and is striving to build an interactive, experiential platform for fairs and exhibitions, educational exchanges, technological development, and industry incubation.  

CMoDA, a subsidiary of Beijing Gehua Cultural Development Group is dedicated to the in-depth development of China’s creative industry.

Helen has a longstanding career as a documentary filmmaker and independent television producer, creating content for CCTV, Movie Channel, Shanghai Media Group, Phoenix TV, Beijing TV and etc.

Helen received the Asian Television Documentary Award in 2010 and a Golden Award from the China Radio and TV Guild in 2009.

In 2006 and 2007 Helen served as Executive Publisher of VARIETY China where she was responsible for overseeing the publishing, editing and marketing of the bi-weekly magazine.  Variety China was co-published with SARFT Newspapers Division in China, Reed Business Information in the US, and co-operated with well-known venture capitalists IDG.

Helen began her career as a producer, writer and director for Shandong TV.

The Australian Centre for Innovation (ACBI) is a new collaborative research centre established by the CSIRO in partnership with NICTA.  The Centre is designed to demonstrate and develop new applications and services that can utilise the capabilities of next generation broadband networks.   

Colin has been a leading exponent of innovative internet and electronic services over the last twenty years working in a variety of media, Internet, consulting and government positions.  He was responsible for establishing popular and awarding winning ABC Online and managing the ABC’s new media service during the 1990s.  More recently, he has been a senior executive with the NSW Government Chief Information Office, responsible for promoting broadband and new forms of service delivery for health, education and other government services. 

Colin has been a Director of the Australian Telecommunications Users Group (ATUG), the Australian Centre for Advanced Computing (ac3) and was the President of the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA).  Colin has also been a member of several industry advisory groups including the Federal Government’s Creative Industries Advisory Committee and National Broadband Development Group.

Yang Lei is one of the most connected people in China's dynamic interactive, digital and visual arts scenes, and he exemplifies cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary storytelling and arts practise.

YANG Lei is Curator and Exhibition Director at the newly founded CMoDA (China Millennium Monument Museum of Digital Arts); Founder of NOTCH Festival (2006) of live media and social innovation; Former Cultural Adviser to the Norwegian Embassy in Beijing; Founder of Radio Take10, a collective internet radio promoting net label culture and demo scene around the world. Yang Lei is active in exploring digital engagement to transform the social fabric and life in China.

YANG Lei is invited by XML to curate a special Chinese digital art program for the Perth big screen during XML Perth 2012. The program, Jiao Cha Vol. 1, kicks off an ongoing exchange series between XML and China in digital art. Jiao Cha, Chinese for “intersect”, refers to the nature of cultural exchange as well as the interdisciplinary nature of digital art. Jiao Cha Vol.1 explores the public space via embedding avatar based social game triggered by smart phone, a traffic generated avatar puzzle and a Chinese digital animation screening program called Cocoon.

As a co-founder and Principal at Meld Studios, a interaction and service design studio in Sydney, Janna guides organisations in making strategic and innovative product and process decisions using research and design.

She has led multidisciplinary design teams for SCAD and Arc Worldwide, and led large-scale interaction design and customer experience engagements for Orbitz, McDougal Littell and Giant Step.

Janna is the past President of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA), an international organisation dedicated to advancing the discipline of Interaction Design, recently ending her four-year service on the Board of Directors. Her involvement with IxDA continues as an advisor to IxDA's global Interaction Awards.