Kam Star

Kam Star is a digital media entrepreneur, inventor and an award winning games developer. Creating his first computer game in 1986, he studied Architecture and is deeply passionate about innovation in play, influence, games and social media. Founder of PlayGen, Kam designs and develops playful solutions and platforms for delivering engaging experiences across the digital landscape. He has produced gaming projects for the BBC, AVIVA, Eden Project, UNESCO, McKinsey, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, NESTA, MoD, NHS, TSB, Wellcome Trust and many more.

Rajat Paharia

Bunchball’s founder and chief product officer, designed the industry’s first and most widely-deployed gamification platform. Rajat’s skill set combines a unique understanding of technology and design that stems from a four year career at design and innovation firm IDEO. Prior to IDEO, Rajat worked at Philips Consumer Electronics, IBM Research and ViewStar. He has a Masters degree in Computer Science from Stanford University, with a focus on Human Computer Interaction, and an undergraduate degree from the University of California Berkeley.

Keith Smith

Keith Smith has spoken at numerous events in the past year (including hosting Amy Jo Kim’s workshops associated with the Gamification Summit; participating on panel discussions during the Gamification Summit as well as Engage Digital, SXSW, IGNITION (full list below). I’ve provided a quick abstract below – it’s more of a generic look at gamification and the things to consider as one build out game layers. If this is too generic let me know; Keith’s spoken at many events and we have some really cool stuff we’re launching in the next few weeks that might make for interesting discussions as well.

Sebastian Deterding

Sebastian Deterding is a designer and researcher working, speaking and writing on user experience, persuasive design, video games, »gameful« or »gameified« design, and the governance of new media. He wants to find out how code shapes conduct – and how to put that knowledge into practice. He is a PhD researcher in communication science at the Graduate School of the Research Center for Media and Communication, Hamburg University, supported by a grant of the Hamburg Federal Initiative of Research Excellence. His thesis looks into the use of game design elements to motivate behaviour in non-game contexts, otherwise known as »gamification«. He is also an affiliated researcher at the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research in Hamburg, and works as an independent user experience designer.

Rick Gibson

Rick is a former Commercial Development Director at UPC Media (where he handled international games deals), a Cranfield MBA, and a Director at GIC. A specialist in online gaming and globalisation, Rick has worked in gaming for eleven years, written numerous reports on gaming, and speaks regularly at industry conferences and in the media about games innovation, new commercial models and the UK development sector. Rick led TIGA’s Investing in the Future report in August 2009 and then again in January 2011, and was one of the founders of the 2008 Games Up? campaign, which dramatically raised the UK studio sector’s profile to UK politicians and mainstream media.

Raf Keustermans

Raf is an experienced marketing and business leader in the digital entertainment industry. As the former Global Marketing Director of EA Playfish he knows the ins and outs of social games marketing and monetization. Prior to Playfish, he headed up the European arm of EA’s casual games portal Pogo.com and before that he was the Head of Marketing for Unibet in Western Europe. Raf is currently working as a freelance consultant and social media strategist.

Endaf Kerfoot

Endaf has worked in all aspects of events, from production to marketing to sales and now back to production, where he is working with Clarion Events on the launch of Brandplay – Essential Strategies for Harnessing Fun and Games in how you Engage your Customers. This event launches in LA on June 22nd and 23rd, and will include a strong focus on gamification and how marketers can make use of game mechanics in their customer engagement strategies.
Endaf has helped put together the speaker panel for the Digital Shoreditch Gamification event, and is excited to be involved with the UK’s first conference examining how game mechanics can be a force for influencing behaviour. He also runs the LinkedIn Masters of Gamification group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3674916

Tom Reding

Winner of 10 national and international awards, Tom is an experienced digital media expert with a background in gaming and transmedia. He is currently the BBC’s editorial lead for games and Product Owner of Games Grid, a service that aims to improve the audience experience of games and playful content on the BBC.

Guy Stephens

Guy Stephens is a champion of the use of social media for customer services, and through this helps brands to understand how they might engage with customers in an increasingly fragmented multichannel environment. He is a founder of the LinkedIn group – where social media meets customer service. He was previously the Customer Knowledge Manager at The Carphone Warehouse, where he was responsible for setting up their use of social media to provide customer service through the use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, AudioBoo and a help blog. Prior to this he was the Global Online Marketing & eCRM Manager at Mars Drinks, working in the online space for over twelve years.

Ben Salmon

Ben Salmon has joined as a global industry expert for Portrait’s range of marketing solutions. Ben has worked in the marketing technology and agency space for nearly 15 years, helping define leading consumer marketing technology strategy to help organizations maximize the value they can leverage from their marketing solutions. “I am delighted to be working at such a renowned, cutting edge technology organization, which is shaping how we communicate with consumers.

Sam Sethi

Besides being a co-organiser of FloweryTweetup and Liverpool FC fan, Sam is an Entrepreneur, a W3C Invited Expert and an active participant in the open web community. He has been a strong advocate of open web standards ever since his time with Netscape in the late-90s.
Sam is currently working on a new project called Skadoosh which utilises many of the new open web standards including – ActivityStreams, Portable Contacts, WebFinger, Salmon, OStatus, OExchange and RDFa.

Dr. Richard A. Bartle

Dr. Richard A. Bartle is Professor of Computer Game Design at the University of Essex, UK. He is best known for having co-written in 1978 the first virtual world, MUD, and for his 1996 Player Types model which has seen widespread adoption by the MMO industry. His 2003 book, “Designing Virtual Worlds”, is the standard text on the subject, and he is an influential writer on all aspects of MMO design and development. In 2010, he was the first recipient of the prestigious Game Developers Choice award of Online Game Legend.

Nicholas Lovell

Nicholas Lovell is CEO of GameShadow, the intelligent tool that helps gamers find the latest patches, demos and cool things to buy for their games. The company was started in 2003 and has raised one round of angel investment. Until April 2006, Nicholas was Managing Director of Lodestar Partners, a corporate finance firm that focuses exclusively on the electronic games industry. He has over a decade of experience advising companies in the media and technology sectors on buying and selling business and raising capital.

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