advisors
2008 ScreenBurn Advisory Board Members
The SXSW ScreenBurn Advisory Board is a team of highly qualified individuals who lend their credibility and innovations to help us develop greater social foresight for our conference’s development. They receive status reports on our activities, and respond with advice as to how we can best serve our audience and the industry.
| Wagner James Au | |
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| nwn.blogs.com | |
| James is author of New World Notes, (nwn.blogs.com), the longest-running Second Life blog, launched during his stint as an “embedded journalist” with Linden Lab, continuing in 2006 as an independent site with Federated Media. He’s also the game/online world editor for GigaOM.com, and author of the upcoming book The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World from HarperCollins, set for a March 2008 publication. |  |
| Fiona Cherbak | |
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| enterprisetalent.com | |
| Fiona Cherbak has enjoyed a career in recruiting, marketing, public relations and strategic planning for clients in digital entertainment and technology, such as The Walt Disney Company, Origin Systems, Kinesoft Development, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and Intelligent Transportation Systems Council. Fiona is presently overseeing client services for Enterprise Talent, an L.A.-based executive recruitment firm in entertainment and media. Previously, she was head of business development for leading game recruiting company, Mary-Margaret.com. In these roles, Fiona has drawn on her expertise as a recruitment specialist for Walt Disney Feature Animation, where she was responsible for recruiting over 300 animation artists and programmers for seven feature films. Fiona is a Steering Committee member and Chairperson of the Development Committee for Women in Games International. She’s currently on the advisory for SXSW Screenburn 2007, and will be moderating two game industry panels at SXSW Interactive this Spring. She penned an article entitled “The 100 Most Influential Women in Games” in late 2006 for game industry news site Next Generation News. She is member of IGDA and served on the advisory board of the Women’s Game Conference. |  |
| Drew Davidson | |
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| waxebb.com | |
| Drew Davidson is a professor, producer and player of interactive media. He is the Director of ETC, Pittsburgh. His background spans academic, industry and professional worlds and he is interested in stories across texts, comics, games and other media. He completed his Ph.D. in Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to that, he received a B.A. and M.A. in Communications Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He chaired Game Art & Design and Interactive Media Design at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and the Art Institute Online and has taught and researched at several universities. He consults for a variety of companies, institutions and organizations and was a Senior Project Manager in the New Media Division of Holt, Rinehart and Winston. He was also a Project Manager in Learning Services at Sapient, and before that he produced interactive media at HumanCode. He is chairing the Sandbox Symposium, an ACM SIGGRAPH conference on video games and serves on the IGDA Education SIG, the ACTlab Steering Committee, and many review boards and jury panels. He founded the Applied Media & Simulation Games Center at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is Editor of the nascent ETC Press and has written a forthcoming book on narratives across media and is writing another on cross-media communication. Drew is currently advising: ETC|mtvU, Improv II, Animation Studio. |  |
| Rodney Gibbs | |
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| www.amazeent.com | |
| Rodney is executive studio director of Amaze Entertainment, a full-service game development studio with offices in Austin and Seattle. Specializing in prominent movie-based games, including X-Men, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, Amaze focuses on Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms. Before the gaming bug bit him, he wrote animated and live-action television programs in Los Angeles, worked as an associate producer for PBS television in Chicago, and as a fellow for Time, Inc., Magazines in New York City. A graduate of Leadership Austin, Rodney chairs the Digital Media Council, a workforce development initiative focused on all facets of creative technology. He co-founded Austin’s chapter of Dorkbot, an international salon akin to a science fair with beer. He serves on the boards of Skillpoint Alliance, International Game Developers–Austin, Austin Community College’s Video Game Development Program, and the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce’s AusTech Alliance. After volunteering as a mentor with Big Brothers Big Sisters for five years, Rodney now serves as vice chair of its board. He created Gamers for Kids’ Sake, an annual game industry fundraiser benefiting the mentoring agency. Rodney received a B.A. from Rice University and a M.F.A in screenwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a James Michener Fellow in the Texas Center for Writers. He is married to Nancy Mims, a textile designer, with whom he has a five-year-old daughter, who is obsessed with Singin’ in the Rain, and a newborn who’s quite fond of nursing. |  |
| Aliza Gold | |
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| digitalmedia.jhu.edu | |
| Aliza is the Coordinator of the Digital Media Collaboratory (DMC) in the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. The DMC bridges academia and industry to develop novel and commercializable intellectual property. The DMC conducts technology research for multidisciplinary projects in video games, modeling & simulation, machine learning, and training applications, to create products that have impact for games, industry, and government. Aliza’s focus is on innovative applications of video game technologies and design strategies such as for learning applications, and innovative technologies as applied within video games. Aliza produced NERO, a video game prototype utilizing innovative machine learning research from the computer science department at UT Austin. The game was released on the Web in June 2005 and has over 60,000 downloads. NERO has received international press attention, as well as an award at the Independent Games Festival at the Game Developer’s Conference in March 2006. Aliza has also worked recently as a designer for a simulation development environment and courseware for US Army medics. The authoring tool and engine launches learning content in multiple media including training missions in the America’s Army engine. In her background as a producer of rich media interactive environments before working with the DMC, Aliza founded setGO, a rich media production company. Previously, as a producer in the Learning Technologies and Games groups at the award-winning Austin company Human Code, and later at e-commerce company Sapient, Aliza created projects pushing the bounds of current technology developing custom applications for clients such as PBS, SRI International, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Aliza is a member of IGDA and the Austin Women Game Developers group, and she presents speeches and serves on panels about video game-related topics nationally and internationally. |  |
| Margaret Wallace | |
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| rebelmonkey.com | |
| Margaret Wallace is the Co-Founder and CEO of Rebel Monkey — a casual game house with headquarters in New York City. Once named by Next Generation as one of the Game Industry’s 100 Most Influential Women of 2006, she currently serves on the Steering Committee for the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Casual Games Special Interest Group. Ms. Wallace was also a Co-Editor of the 2006 IGDA Casual Games White Paper. Before Rebel Monkey, Ms. Wallace Co-Founded and was CEO of Skunk Studios, a casual game developer based in San Francisco. Prior to that, she produced, designed and contributed to various online games and “creativity” applications while at Shockwave.com. Ms. Wallace also created and contributed to CD-ROM and online content for Mindscape Entertainment and at PF Magic, makers of the “virtual pets” game series, Dogz and Catz (currently published by Ubisoft), and Mattel’s Hot Wheels. |  |
| Tony Walsh | |
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| clickableculture.com | |
| Tony Walsh is a Toronto-based creative developer and design consultant working in cross-media, cross-platform, collaborative and game spaces. He has helped plan, write, illustrate and design compelling, narrative-driven entertainment and educational projects since 1994. A gamer since the 1970s, Walsh has played a key writing and game design role on the multi-award-winning “Regenesis” extended reality games (2004-2005) and the SXSW Web Award-winning and Interactive Emmy-nominated “Fallen Alternate Reality Game” (2006). Walsh teaches part-time in the Game Design programs at George Brown College and Centennial College in Toronto. He has been a mentor as part of the Laboratory of Advanced Media Production in Australia and as part of BVAC’s Producers Institute for New Media Technologies in San Francisco. This is his second year as an advisory board member for the Screenburn Festival. |  |
| Evan Van Zelfden | |
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| vanzelfden.com | |
| As a journalist, Mr Van Zelfden writes exclusively about the business of games, for publications varying from the Austin Chronicle to the Economist Magazine. Games, he asserts, are the greatest intersection of Business and Art (with a capital A). He regularly contributes industry coverage to Next-Generation and Gamasutra, with his content syndicated by BusinessWeek. |  |