Lane Merrifield 
Lane Merrifield Executive Vice President, Walt Disney Internet Group, Co-Founder and General Manager, Club Penguin
Lane Merrifield is general manager and one of three co-founders of Club Penguin, one of the most popular and fastest-growing virtual worlds for children. Since Club Penguin’s inception, Lane has led the management, operations and business strategy for Club Penguin out of the company’s headquarters in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
Lane helped develop and launch Club Penguin in 2005 and played an integral role in its phenomenal growth and success. The company’s commitment to creating a safe and ad-free online playground helped propel Club Penguin to international acclaim and a partnership with the Walt Disney Company, which acquired Club Penguin in August 2007.
Prior to his work with Club Penguin and the Walt Disney Internet Group, Lane held various technical and marketing roles with a range of companies in Canada and the United States, but his most memorable employment experience will always be his first job at Disneyland.
Lane has always nurtured a passion for using technology to connect people in new ways. He loves the fact that Club Penguin has the potential to bring kids from around the world together in a fun, creative and safety-focused environment.
Keynote:At Their Service: Making a Difference by Putting Players First
Service with a smile. Service above self. At your service. Have phrases like these lost all meaning in this age of making a quick return and rising to the top as quickly as possible? Lane Merrifield, co-founder of Club Penguin (www.clubpenguin.com), one of the largest and fastest-growing virtual worlds for children, and newly named head of development for all the Walt Disney Company’s kids and family-targeted virtual worlds, thinks they have. Lane says it’s time our industry shifted its focus back to what matters most: serving customers. In this keynote address, Lane will explore the idea that success is derived from a mindset of focusing on the creation of a culture of excellent customer service. He argues that if you do that correctly, monetization will take care of itself.
Bruce Sterling
American Science Fiction Author & Futurist
Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his seminal work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre. He has also written many books, including The Hacker Crackdown, Holy Fire, Heavy Weather, Distraction, and Zeitgeist.
Sterling is one of the founders of the cyberpunk movement in science fiction, as well as its chief ideological promulgator, and one whose polemics on the topic earned him the nickname "Chairman Bruce." He was also one of the first organizers of the Turkey City Writer's Workshop and is a frequent attendee at the Sycamore Hill Writer's Workshop.
He has written for The New York Times, Newsday, Whole Earth Review, Details, Mondo 2000, bOING bOING, Interzone, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and is currently a contributing writer to Wired. He won Hugo Awards for the novelette Bicycle Repairman and the novella Taklamakan.
Keynote:Computer Entertainment 35 Years from Today
Pong is 36 years old, and Pong marked the birth of popular computer entertainment.
Imagine if someone from 2008 walked into the office of Nolan Bushnell in 1973 as he prepared to launch Pong, to explain today's "computer entertainment" to the great pioneer. For instance: hundreds of thousands of networked people evolving their own Sim space aliens. Or: an artist in residence in New York City fabricating an eighteen foot tall digital statue of Gandhi, as, using a treadmill and Second Life, he mimics Gandhi's epic march to the sea. How could you explain that insanely great stuff to Nolan Bushnell in 1973 -- even though it's all perfectly true? It's par for the course for us -- but for him, could you even find the words -- the most basic concepts?
Now imagine the kind of "computer entertainment" our grandchildren will be tackling in 35 years. What if some visitor from the future frankly told you what was going on -- your industry, in his own language, from the year 2043?
Nobody can do that -- but Bruce Sterling certainly knows how to fake it. And he will!
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Jason Page
Audio Manager, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe R&D
Jason Page has worked in the computer games industry since 1988 and has held job positions of games programmer, audio programmer, "musician" (audio engineer / content creator) and currently is the Audio Manager at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's R&D division. This roll includes the managing, designing and programming various parts of the PlayStation(R)3 audio SDK libraries (the PS3 audio library "MultiStream" is used by many developers worldwide), as well as supporting developers on all PlayStation platforms with any audio issues. Jason's past work as a audio content creator includes music and sound effects for titles such as Rainbow Islands, Gods, The Chaos Engine2, Sensible World of Soccer, Cool Boarders 2 and Gran Turismo.
Keynote: That It? Next Gen Audio
Now that Next Gen is Current Gen, Jason discusses what it has given both us and the end user. He looks at how much potential is still left untapped and how - or if - it is possible to truely push the boundaries of audio with the current methods of game development.
- What is it that developers expected from next gen audio capabilities, has it been delivered and if so, where do we go next?
- How do the tools and methods used within the games industry compare to the pro audio market, and what could we learn from each other?
Coming from a unique perspective of having helped many developers integrate audio into games, Jason knows how many of the titles use audio to enhance the gaming experience and discusses the differences between developers attitudes towards the importance of audio.
More featured speakers and keynotes will be announced soon.
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