Pepe Agell leads Chartboost’s worldwide expansion efforts. In this role, he oversees the company’s publisher base and strategic partnerships, to ensure the highest standard of service and support is provided to Chartboost’s customers around the world. In addition, Agell channels feedback and interaction with the company’s worldwide publishers to inform development of the company’s leading Direct Deal Marketplace. He holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the UPC Barcelona and the ETH Zurich. Prior to joining Chartboost, Agell led product management and operations teams in both multinational (Hilti AG) and startups (3scale and Innovalley).

As Art Director, Jan-Bart van Beek guards the overall quality of art and animation at Guerrilla. A photography student at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague, Jan-Bart turned to computer graphics software to enhance his work. After graduation he applied his knowledge as a CG artist in the field of advertising. His ambition to create something more enduring led him to join Guerrilla, where he quickly became the Lead Artist on Killzone 1 and the Art Director on Killzone 2 and beyond.

Alexis Bonte (36) is the co-founder and CEO of eRepublik Labs. eRepublik Labs (one of the top 25 European start ups according to TechCrunch) is inventing game worlds and transforming the way they are created, distributed and played by leveraging the power of communities and the Web. eRepublik.com its first massive online social strategy game, is set in a mirror version of the real world and launched in November 2007. eRepublik.com was a prize winner in the LeWeb3 start-up competition in 2007 as well as the TechCrunch FOWA competition in 2008 and was recognized by AlwayOn has one of the top 100 Private companies in the world in 2009. eRepublik was also a Webby Awards nominee in 2009 and 2010.

Prior to eRepublik, Alexis was with lastminute.com for 6 years right up to its 1b$ trade sale to Sabre in 2005.

Alexis is also the non-executive chairman of the video and music centred online community trilulilu.ro, the n’1 Romanian website. He is also a recognized speaker & panelist (CEBIT, La Red Innova, Games Gone Wild, Gamelab, Interactive Entertainment Summit, FICOD, GDC Europe etc.) and guest lecturer on Internet start ups and online games at several Universities. Alexis holds a BA Honours Degree in International Business & Languages from the European Business School (London), he is a sailing national champion (Portugal) was selected as a Young Global Leader (YGL) in 2012 by the World Economic Forum (Davos) and is fluent in 5 languages.

Thomas Bleyer is managing director of Ravensburger Digital and is responsible for all digital game publishing, development and investment activities of Ravensburger group, Europe’s largest publisher of traditional games, puzzles and toys. Thomas has spent the last 15 years in the area of technology and media start-ups, being a repeat entrepreneur and business angel, as well as former venture capital investor. In 2009 he founded Ravensburger Digital.

He recently worked as Creative Strategist, consulting at Google, where he 
did product visioning, strategy, and created work across many 
different teams and platforms. Previous to this, Bryant was a founding member of Omnicom digital agency Tribal DDB.

Bryant has received more than 50 awards for digital and film work at 
festivals and shows including Cannes and D&AD. He has 
had his work exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

He has been a keen gamer since 1978, much to his wife's dismay. Now his young sons run Minecraft servers

Jordan Casey is a 13 year old programmer from Waterford. He is also one of the world's youngest CEO's and probably the world's youngest gaming CEO. His company, Casey Games is one of Ireland's most successful games companies. At Festival of Games, he will be sharing his story, his projects and what's next for him and his company.

As a digital strategist, his opinions – not always popular or mainstream – have been sought by clients and major advertising agencies. He has been invited to be a guest speaker at many prestigious events to discuss a variety of topics; ranging from the evolution of casual gaming, tech convergence, gamification to the emergence of IPTV.

 

Menno Deen has a background in arts and humanities. His design practice and theoretically knowledge of games echoes in his work at (1) Ranj Serious Games, (2) his teachings at Fontys School of ICT and Eindhoven University of Technology, and (3) the PhD thesis he is finishing on Games, Autonomy, Motivation and Engagement.

Menno founded the game development studio Lapp with Mark van Kuijk (former Head of Studio at Zylom). Lapp develops games for toddlers that focus upon parent-child interaction. Additionally Menno is responsible for innovative projects such as www.swimgames.nl (games in the swimming center) and the Games [4Health] Jam (www.gamesjam.nl).

Joost is fascinated by games and human behavior. He has over fifteen years of commercial research experience in interactive entertainment and technology industries, and was also one of the first academics to study video games. After receiving a doctorate from Columbia University on the topic, he founded SuperData to help the games industry better understand online, mobile and digital games. In early 2010 the company secured multi-year seed funding and today SuperData is a leading games industry researcher. Clients include publishers such as Electronic Arts, SEGA, and Pokémon as well as all the major Wall street firms. In addition to his business adventures, Joost continues to teach at the NYU Game Center. He lives in the East Village in New York, with his wife Janelle.

Jeroen Elfferich studied Artificial Intelligence and Sociology and, aged 20, co-founded web developer NetlinQ in 1995. As CTO he helped to grow the company to over 200 employees when it was acquired by Framfab (now LBi Group) in 2000. A year later, he co-founded Ex Machina, where he currently serves as CEO and is responsible for overall management. Jeroen has been working on online gaming technology since 1998, mobile since 2001 and second screen since 2004. His interest is in synchronous, social and interactive entertainment across mobile, web and TV.

Bridget has 25+ years experience in the industry starting with Atari games creating coin-op video classics and producing and directing the line of CD roms called Living Books. She was the managing director at Imaginengine and has experience doing just about everything from producing internal and external development teams to creating art and designing all types of interactive products. These include online multiplayer games, DS, PC and Mac, iOS and cell phone games, websites and games that work with peripheral toys and dance pads. Notable clients include: Disney, Nickelodeon, Atari, Scholastic, Motorola, Universal, Take2 Interactive, Ubisoft, THQ, Valusoft and Konami.

Interactive Achievement Award loser Scott Foe is the undisputed most-spectacular failure that the games industry has ever witnessed, having been in on the ground-floor of both the commercially flaccid Sega Dreamcast and the awesomely horrible Nokia N-Gage.

A fifteen-year veteran of the games industry, in 2011 Foe co-founded Big Head Mode, a San Francisco-based mobile games studio which creates and publishes deeply personalized games that star you and your friends. In addition to serving as Big Head Mode's Chief Creative, Foe also serves as mentor and board member to many pre-funding and seed-stage startups in the mobile and social gaming spaces.

Liselore Goedhart is co-founder and co-owner of Monobanda, a Utrecht based game company that develops playful interactive experiences. She's an illustrator and game designer who graduated from the Design for Virtual Theatre and Games course at the Utrecht School of the Arts in 2008.

Right after graduating she started a company with four of her classmates aiming to create fun, diverse and accessible games for a broad audience. Monobanda’s goal is to get people to play again. They are inspired by the social interactions found on a playground or in a sandbox, where creativity and imagination run free.

Liselore’s main focus at Monobanda is designing cute and organic characters and their environments. These characters are born in her sketchbook and evolve in her tool of the trade, Illustrator. Forming shapes, creating eyes and finding colors, this is when they come to life.

 

Oliver Kern is the VP of Operations at Iqu. Prior to joining iQU, Oliver was head of online strategy at Jagex, the UK’s largest independent games developer and publisher. At Jagex, he created the marketing department and defined the online and publishing strategy. Previously, he led the International Marketing at Oberon Media. His experience in the online games industry includes disciplines such as paid search, SEO, display media, affiliation, social media, content aggregation and syndication, game monetization and micropayments.

Hendrik Koekkoek brings experience in business and international economics to his role as an analyst at Distimo, the innovative app store company. Founded in May 2009, Distimo addresses the challenges created by a widely fragmented app store marketplace filled with equally fragmented information and statistics. Distimo produces in-depth, analytical reports for companies interested in the mobile application ecosystem, and offers valuable insight into important trends happening within app stores including the Apple App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Windows Phone Marketplace and Blackberry App World. Distimo App Analytics offers mobile developers a free analytics tool to monitor their own and competitive applications across multiple app stores around the world, without any adjustments needed to their application’s code. Distimo AppIQ enables you to track daily estimated downloads and revenues for any app in the market Hendrik’s responsibilities at Distimo include analyzing the public and transactional data of all major app stores, developing and presenting bespoke research reports for clients, and in the creation and development of a monthly free report that is available to the public. Prior to joining Distimo, Hendrik gained experience working for the Edukans Foundation where he was responsible for designing and implementing a “monitoring and evaluation” protocol for their projects in developing countries.

Hendrik holds a Master’s Degree in International Economics and Business from Utrecht University in The Netherlands.

Tim has been a passionate Internet entrepreneur for several years prior to cofounding HitFox Group and AppLift.com. He acted as a founder and managing director of the Leipzig based eLearning startup, lecturio.de and as Interim-CFO at one of Europe's leading sports apparel online retailers, mysportgroup.de. He holds a Master's Degree in Business & Economics from HHL - Leipzig Graduate School of Management, a leading international business school in entrepreneurial education (#1 FT Global Entrepreneurship Ranking 2011, 2012), where he graduated best-of-class in 2008. Prior to HHL, Tim studied at the University of Mainz and Universidad del Pacifico in Quito/Ecuador.

 

Dmitry Kuzmenko graduated from the University of Humanities and Social Sciences in Saint Petersburg, Russia with a degree in Sound Direction. He founded Strategic Music in 2003, and has since been working on music and sound design for computer games. Now, Strategic Music has more than 450 projects in its portfolio, and delivers a wide variety of services which include the creation of music, crafting sound design, voice-over recordings and the recording of music with symphonic orchestras and other ensembles.

 

The Honble Minister for IT & Communications - Government of Andhra Pradesh.

Wolf has been a German for 28 years now and considers himself an Indie-Developer. After receiving a diploma in design, being an ambulance car driver and a construction site worker, Wolf co-founded the university start-up THREAKS in 2010. In their three years of existence the THREAKS have already received several awards from both the music- and gaming industry. The 9 people team is utilizing Unity3D and their proprietary sound technology to develop non-linear music games. Together with the american Publisher Reverb and music artists like the Grammy Nominee Austin Wintory, THREAKS are currently working on the action-music game Beatbuddy (PC/Console).

Menno van Leeuwen (1973) is responsible for the sector Technology, Media and Telecommunications at ABN AMRO. He has been following the TMT trends, initiaties reseatch and presents findings. He is also a sparring partner for companies from the TMT sector on subjects like growing strategies, investments, finance and takeovers.

Menno is also a jury member for the Innovation Awards and mentor of Startupbootcamp, programs of which ABN AMRO is partner.

I’m a freelance illustrator / concept-artist making various illustrative content for games and other media. During the past 4 years i worked for several companies on game and animation productions. My services range from pre-visualizing concept-art to final Illustrations.
The main focus of my work as a concept-artist has been exploring and developing the right style for every project. As an illustrator I usually work on backgrounds for video-games and animations and occasionally do traditional illustration work.
The root of my style is always a dialogue between a traditional, hand-drawn or painterly approach and the specific stylistic needs of every project.

After spending a year in Florence, Italy to continue my dream of becoming a classically trained painter of modern life i'm back in Holland and available for freelance work!

Ilja Linnemeijer is partner at PwC and leads the Dutch Technology practice of PwC. He is a Dutch qualified accountant and has some 15 years of experience of working with Technology and Entertainment companies ranging from large international conglomorates to small fast growing startups. Within PwC Ilja is specialised in the Video Gaming Industry. He is responsible for the Video Gaming Outlook in PwC's Entertainment and Media Outlook flagship publication and regularly presents about developments in the Video Gaming industry.

Ilja is also mentor at Startup Bootcamp and Supervisory Board Member of the MC Theater in Amsterdam.

As the HR Manager, Delano Lobman is responsible for all Guerrilla’s HR matters. Being an HR professional for over 15 years, he is proficient in all areas of HR, Recruitment and Talent Development. He joined Guerrilla in 2008 to lift its HR team and services to the level where it is today. Delano holds a Master of Arts in Sociology from the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Dennis is an engineer who discovered the value of visually sharing of vision, process and movement of organizations. With two partners he shares the knowledge of design thinking in workshops and courses. The core: Think, Draw, Share!

PR Manager Sarah Lüken has been part of the InnoGames public relations team since October 2010, where she is responsible for B2B communication as well as internal and external event planning. With 100 million registered players, InnoGames is one of the world's leading developers and providers of online games. The Hamburg-based company has scored major successes with games such as Grepolis, Forge of Empires and Tribal Wars.
Before her career at InnoGames, Sarah gathered experience in print, TV and online journalism as well as media production. Sarah holds a M.A. in international politics and German literature. During her studies, she worked as a freelance producer and editor at a TV production company and has been a freelance writer for several online and print magazines in Germany.

After working as an artist and creative in the advertising and internet industry for several years, Michel Maas turned to the casual game business in 2005. At Zylom he spent his first 6 years being an art director on downloadable casual games for women. Best known for the delicious series he tried to understand what makes great game art and at the same time raise the quality of both artist and game. He is now working as a creative director at SpilGames, working on games for both children and grown-ups.

David has been a generalist in and around the games industry for over 24 years, playing his part in development, management, and business roles. No matter what role he has taken, he has always maintained a strong connection with the technical domain in order to better understand and define solutions to the challenges that we all face.

His passion is changing the world for the better through both strategic and disruptive innovation of technology and business models, and evangelizing new opportunities to whomever will listen. He loves success, and helping others to achieve success for themselves.

In addition to his day job, he feels honoured to contribute to the games industry however he can through the following activities:

• Startup Bootcamp - Mentor 
• Head of Mobile/Games SIG for Silicon Vikings Copenhagen 
• DADIU Greenhouse - Co-founder and Mentor 
• IGDA.DK - Former Chairman and Business Chapter SIG Leader 
• DADIU - Coordination Committee Member 
• Nordic Game Jam - Meddler & Coffee Maker

Chris McEntee, born in sunny California, started his game career as a Warcraft III modder in 2006 where he taught himself how to animate in 3DsMax. After two years of freelance animation projects in numerous modding communities, he attended college in the Netherlands where he discovered a strong passion for game and level design. He is currently working as a Game and Level Designer at Ubisoft Montpellier, with his most recent titles being Rayman Origins, Rayman Jungle Run and Rayman Legends. You can see more of his work on his professional website at www.chrismcentee.com

Seth van der Meer has over 15 years experience in the online industry, from making online worlds for children for charity organization CliniClowns, to co-founding the online youth community Mind Your Own Life. Seth also has games industry experience by developing applied games for retail investor Corio and by initiating game incubator Dutch Game Garden and founding Festival of Games. Combining his knowledge of games and young demographics he co-founded Developlay. Developlay develops and publishes media to help kids live a happy and healthy life.

Diego is a co-founder of Jampp, a data-driven mobile application marketing platform focused in Latin America. Before Jampp in 1999 while at university in Buenos Aires he co-founded Livra.com which became the leading online research company in Latin America and was acquired by Ipsos (one of the top market research organisations worldwide) in 2008. Diego is also an investor and advisor for a number of other startups.

Hermien Works at GOC, center for personnel development for the creative industry. She researches trends in the areas of learning, career development and job qualifications. Hermien is also the co-author of “Trends in the creative industry” and is part of a variety of innovative project teams researching the future jobs in the industry.

Tom Pearce started in the 70’s as an engineer in studios in London with major artists. In the 80’s and 90’s he toured and recorded with artists such as Elton John, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck. Since 2005 he’s focussed on sound design, composition/licensing for gaming, working on titles for ClickGamer, Musigames, Atari, IMG and Panzar. In addition to lecturing at the SAE, he’s currently producing music for upcoming Dutch artists.

An entrepreneur, software engineer and user-experience evangelist, Eyal Rabinovich specializes in developing and delivering products and ideas. With extensive experience in developing consumer-facing products, Eyal understands the importance of continual improvement in today’s fast-paced digital world and anticipating market demands. His commercial involvement in a variety of industries has provided him with an expanded market view, together with the ability to lead development from ideation and through to successful product launches. Eyal’s previous experience includes serving as an officer in an elite IDF Navy unit. In addition to being a Senior Software Engineer at Hedge-Tech Financial Engineering, and Lipman Electronic Engineering Ltd. Today Eyal is the co-founder of MoMinis, a leading games publisher.

Michiel Rademakers (1971) leads all digital activities board game company Royal Jumbo. His favorite statement is that 160 years old Jumbo is the oldest social gaming company in the world. Michiel is founder of iPawn, a new generation of award winning digital board games whereby you play with real figures or playing pieces on the iPad. He is also responsible for creating the world of classic strategy game Stratego where players can play against each other cross platform. Michiel loves the social element of (strategic) board games and has a passion for the game business. Michiel gained his online experience working in different online marketing roles for De Telegraaf Media Group and TomTom. You can follow Michiel at @rademakers.

Claudia Rodriguez Ortiz is a graduated engineer from MIT (USA) and a previous scholar from Ecole Polytechnique Centre for Research in Management in Paris. She has over 20 years of experience working on environmental systems, intelligent platforms, strategy, product development and innovation, sustainability, and games across 10 countries. Her current work is at the nexus of all her previous experience: platforms that facilitate collective intelligence to create strategies for a sustainable planet. She believes in mobilising and empowering groups of individuals through joy. She is co-founder of Ahead of the Game- a company that blends virtual and real playful environments since 2004.

 

Dirk Schluter (1980) is one of the founders of FONK, an Amsterdam based agency specialized in the concept and creation of touch application.

As being responsible for the Jumbo account Dirk was highly involved with the creation of iPawn, the revolutionary digital game board concept.

Before starting FONK in 2010 Dirk used to work within the creative digital industry in Cape Town.

FONK has acquired an international acclaimed innovative status with the realization of:
- iPawn - "A new way of playing games together"
- Maily - your kids first email
- ING's Fame Game
- 22tracks Digital Jukebox

Sten is an entrepreneurial executive and experienced general manager with proven ability to innovative in business development.

More then 32 years experience from media, art and design production, marketing and management. Varying from theatre, radio, interior design, animation, film, interactive applications, web design, exhibitions and performance projects and not the least, games, to creative or administrative leadership and business development and international sales and trade commissions. Creative in finding new businesses and and often brought in as consultant to bring change, vison and turn-around.

JP van Seventer is development director at Dutch Game Garden (Utrecht, The Netherlands) where he directs a game incubator-accelerator. He’s got over a decade of experience in entertainment game development on PC, PlayStation, Wii and mobile platforms in the disciplines of design, art and management as well as business development. In recent years he has been a driving force behind several applied games and healthcare innovation projects.

He’s a member of the Dutch Game Awards jury, an alumni member of the GATE game research board of advisors and frequently speaks at events about improving the business of game development.

Justin Stolzenberg has worked in the Games Industry since 2002, when he started out as a games journalist at leading German media company Computec Media. As Head of Online / New Business at Computec for 4 years he helped build a multi-million user portfolio of gaming-related properties and showed a strong expertise in creating, growing and commercially exploiting new online products. Justin also was a driving force behind the browser-based blockbuster game Shakes & Fidget (30m players worldwide, 8-digit yearly revenues).

As the Co-Founder and COO, Justin leads European Games Group’s product acquisition, performance optimization as well as all international marketing efforts. GamesGroup has 5m users in 12 territories as of March 2013 (monthly growth in the 2-digit %) and strong monetization rates that allow aggressive, yet profitable expansion.

Kadri was a part of the team that created the Estonian startup competition and later ran it for years. She has been supporting startups in various ways and she is also an entrepreneur herself having co-founded companies in management consultancy, catering and even fashion retail. Kadri’s energy comes from fresh ideas and inspiring people. This is also one of the reasons of co-founding GameFounders, the first gaming startup accelerator in Europe.

Bart Veldhuizen has a long track record in community management in the field of 3D software. After joining Shapeways in their very early days, his main focus has always been advocating the possibilities of 3D printing and making designers succesful in their use of the technology. Bart has the best job in the world, being able to work with amazing people every day and playing with 3D printers whenever he can.

Alfonso is 28 years old and studied computer science in Spain. He began working for Internet Startups since 2006 as Project Manager for social networks, online communities, online games and virtual worlds or MMOs for Spain, France and Latin America.

Alfonso loves to play online games since he was young and founded PlaySpace.com in 2011 with Enrique Dubois (serial entrepreneur and CEO of the Spanish Incubator & Accelerator Mola.com).

Benjamin is 34 years old and studied computer science, business administration and game design. He joined Gameforge after his graduation in 2008 and is responsible for licensing new content for Gameforge as Head of Sourcing. Benjamin has love for games in all forms and is a former achievement addict.

Andrew Walker is a 20 year game industry veteran with experience in game development, developer relations, publishing and business development. Andrew was a member of the Microsoft Xbox and Xbox Live launch teams as well the creator of the Direct3D Advisory Board. Following Microsoft, he spent seven successful years at THQ signing successful innovative games such as Metro 2033 and the student indie hit, De Blob. Most recently, Andrew has spent the last three years running a successful consultancy helping indie developers, major sports brands and technology companies.

Mary-Margaret Walker, CEO of Mary-Margaret Network, leads the game industry in retained “key-man” recruiting, executive search and marketing of job openings.