GamesBeat Summit’s lightning round will focus on disruption

It’s time to introduce our lightning round session at our upcoming GamesBeat Summit 2017: How games, sci-fi, and tech create real-world magic. This session will feature five speakers talking in lightning-fast five-minute sessions.

GamesBeat Summit 2017 will take place on May 1-2 at the historic Claremont resort hotel in Berkeley, Calif., just a short distance from San Francisco. You can secure your seat here. Register today and receive 20 percent off current ticket prices. Use the code Deantak.

Tom Emrich, partner at Super Ventures, will moderate the session with an iron fist. (Well, maybe not). He is an investor at Super Ventures, a fund and incubator focused on augmented reality. He is also founder of We Are Wearables, and a co-producer of Augmented World Expo. We were inspired by this session at the Migs conference in Canada.

Our speakers include Robin Hunicke, cofounder of the independent game studio Funomena. which creates experimental games for console, PC, VR and AR platforms (Luna, Woorld and Wattam) in San Francisco. A game designer and producer by training, she has a background in Computer Science, Art and applied Game Studies. She has been designing, making and teaching about games for over 12 years (Journey, Boom Blox, MySims, TheSims2).  Her passion is for making games that explore new feelings, ideas, and modes of interaction.
Robin is an outspoken evangelist for increasing the participation of women and under-represented minorities within the Arts, Games & Tech. She is an Associate Professor of the Arts Division at UC Santa Cruz, and Director of the Art, Games & Playable Media BA  program.  She  supports a broad range of initiatives including: Amplifying New Voices, the annual Experimental Gameplay Workshop, PlaySFMOMA, the Lexus Design Award, Google Made with Code​, Girls Make Games, and ​the CS For Al ​initiative.

Above: Ravi Belwal of Samsung.

Image Credit: Samsung

Another speaker is Ravi Belwal, business development leader for mobile games at Samsung. Ravi identifies relevant global business partners and negotiates win-win deals; turns products into solutions for partners; Negotiates complex strategic mobile games development and distribution deals with global and Indie partners.

Also speaking is Raheel Hasan is a cofounder and CEO of 1APP, which hopes to disrupt the app stores via apps that you can play instantly on any device. He started 1APP four years ago. It uses proprietary cloud-based mobile operating system (OneOS) to make makes apps instantly available on mobile devices.

Above: Deanna Terzian, president of Curriculaworks.

Image Credit: CurriculaWorks

Deanna Terzian is president of Curriculaworks and its sister company Tutorworks. For more than 15 years, she has led the creation of digital products and direct services that provide effective and fun learning experiences in challenging educational and operational environments.  Tutorworks has served more than 20,000 struggling students in 700 schools using a motivational learning approach that blends digital learning and traditional academic tutoring. Through a five-year partnership with the Office of Naval Research, Curriculaworks created Project Azriel, a first-person-shooter-zombie-themed-video-game-cognitive trainer designed to improve fluid intelligence. She’ll talk about “Gaming the system: Why the military embraced game-based learning and the classroom has not.”

And our final lightning round speaker is Justin Bailey, CEO of Fig. He will talk on “The cure for sequelitis.” Bailey founded Fig in late 2014 to do equity crowdfunding for games. His work in video games includes experience funding and publishing a variety of premium, free-to-play, and mobile games, including Broken Age (formerly known as Double Fine Adventures), Massive Chalice, Hack ‘n’ Slash and Middle Manager of Justice. Bailey previously served as the chief operating officer of Double Fine Productions, where he established a new independent publishing label called “Double Fine Presents.”

The session will take place during the morning of May 2. We hope you can attend.

Other speakers include Michael Chang of NCSoft; Amitt Mahajan of Presence Capital; Sean Lee of Wargaming; Phil Sanderson of IDG Ventures; Jazy Zhang, former CFO at Giant Interactive Group; James Zhang, CEO of Concept Art House; Lisa Cosmas Hanson, managing partner of Niko Partners; Jim Ying, senior adviser at CV Capital; Kim Pallister of Intel; Austin Grossman of Magic Leap; Adam Gazzaley of UCSF; Listen.com founder Rob Reid; Tim Chang of Mayfield Fund; science fiction writer Eliot Peper; tech writer Violet Blue; Thomas Geffroyd, brand director at Ubisoft; Michael Condrey and Glen Schofield, founders of Sledgehammer Games; Rod Chong, chief commercial officer of Slightly Mad Studios; and Laszlo Kishonti, CEO of AImotive.

And still more include Ted Price, CEO of Insomniac Games; Mike Gallagher, CEO of the Entertainment Software Association; John Underkoffler, CEO of Oblong Industries and science advisor for Minority Report; Gary Whitta, the screenwriter for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story; Richard Marks of Sony PlayStation; Akshay Khanna of the Philadelphia 76ers; Greg Richardson of Team Dignitas; Megan Gaiser, CEO of Spiral Media; Guy Bendov, CEO of Side-Kick Games; Rami Ismail, cofounder of Vlambeer; Asra Rasheed, executive producer at Disney; Asi Burak, founder of Power Play; Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games; Owen Mahoney, the CEO of Nexon; Rich Hilleman of Amazon Game Studios; Chris Roberts, CEO of Roberts Space Industries; and Jamil Moledina of Google Play.

Above: Chris Roberts of Roberts Space Industries.

Image Credit: Cloud Imperium Games

Inspiring moments lead to disrupting the worlds of gaming, tech, and entertainment. Who hasn’t been influenced by great novels like Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, which gave us virtual worlds, or Tom Cruise’s data gloves and gesture-controlled computer in Minority Report? Now those things have become real, and we want to see what’s coming next.

Our theme is about what inspires game developers, executives, and investors to be creative. Part of the event will focus on the inspiration cycle that is accelerating as the walls between science fiction, video games, and real-world technology come down. We don’t think there’s another conference that focuses on the seams between these industries.

This event will focus on inspiration and creativity. So much of what used to be science fiction is coming true, and it is inspiring even more accelerated visions of the future in games and other entertainment. We hope to inspire you by taking you to the moments that led to great ideas across multiple industries. You’ll leave refreshed and ready to change the worlds of gaming, technology, and more.

We think this conference will offer a rare chance for cross-pollination and networking between high-level people in different industries, and we believe that insights in one place can lead to inspirations in another.

This conference is for high-end gaming executives, startup CEOs, developers, investors, publishers, marketers, tech experts, entertainment industry professionals, sci-fi experts, AR and VR executives, and other professionals. I should also point out that this is where we try to create an actual GamesBeat community with our supporters, readers, and attendees. We gather the right people in the room and encourage everyone to get to know each other. Join us.

If you’re interested in sponsoring, message [email protected]. Thanks to our sponsors Samsung, Intel, Gazillion, Vungle, the Canadian consolate, Concept Art House, Wargaming America, MindMaze, and Blackstorm.

Breakout sessions

• Intersection of sci-fi, games, and tech
• Monetization: How to acquire and retain your user base
• Deals: Follow the money
• Esports and community
• Is the gaming world flat?
• Platforms: Where to place your bets? VR, AR, and more

Advisory board

• Sam Barlow, game developer of Her Story and creative director at Interlude
• Michael Chang, senior vice president at NCSoft
• Daniel Cho, chairman at Innospark
• Jay Eum, managing director, Translink Capital
• Clinton Foy, chairman of the Immortals and managing director at Crosscut Ventures
• Megan Gaiser, co-CEO at Spiral Media
• Lee Jones, global business lead Google Ads
• Perrin Kaplan, principal at Zebra Partners
• Roy Liu, general manager at Linekong USA
• Wanda Meloni, executive director of the Open Gaming Alliance
• Jamil Moledina, game strategic lead at Google Play
• Adam Orth, founder at Three One Zero
• Mihai Pohontu, vice president of emerging technologies at Samsung
• Mike Sepso, cofounder of MLG and senior vice president at Activision Blizzard
• Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors
• Margaret Wallace, CEO of Playmatics
• Marco DeMiroz, cofounder, The Venture Reality Fund

I’ve been writing about our theme for a while — the accelerating cycle of inspiration between tech, games, and science fiction. I interviewed Shane Wall, HP’s chief technology officer, about the connection between sci-fi and tech. The Westworld TV show also explored the seams between artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and video games.