Great speaker line-up for SIGGRAPH virtual worlds/social net meet

Hi,

for those attending SIGGRAPH, we have a great line-up of speakers for the first SIGGRAPH Multiuser Virtual Environments BOF: MUVE MOOT

BTW - if any of you have a suggestion how we might have remote attendance pls share your ideas.

Meeting details:
Location: Los Angeles Convention Center

Room(s): 507

Date(s): Wednesday 13 August

Reservation Time(s): setup time at 12noon, teardown until 2:45pm

Meeting Time(s): 12:30-2:30pm

Room Setup: theater style with seating for up to 100.

link: http://www.siggraph.org/s2008/attendees/birds/

Speakers:

1. Michael Wilson, the CEO of There.com, http://www.there.com/

In 1997, Wilson was one of eBay's first employees, where he was responsible for building the organization and technology for the world's largest and most successful eCommerce site. The architecture, processes and organizations he established during eBay's startup days in 1997 carried eBay through its IPO and beyond.

Wilson began his career at Macy's California, where he developed point of sale and electronic credit card authorization systems, later becoming the youngest senior executive in the company's history. He later joined Chevron, providing management and software support for Chevron's 10,000+ member online user community.

After Chevron, Wilson was an early employee and key developer of the Mainframe and Macintosh product at Oracle Corporation. After several years, he moved on to Neuron Data, where he worked on bringing artificial intelligence together with modern relational and object-oriented database technology. Excited by the emergence of portable computing, he later worked for eShop (acquired by Microsoft in 1996), as the Chief Architect and Project Manager and helped create the world's first online shopping platform.

Wilson has also held key positions at daVinci Time and Space, developing ITV-based community, and at The Well, leading the development of its web-based community product, Well Engaged.

2. Mick Brady, Professor Emeritus, Russell Sage College.

Mick is currently Live Teams Manager at the Serious Game Design Institute at the Santa Barbara City College; Second Life photographer, blogger, writer and digital artist. ... http://mikimojo.com

Mick writes of himself: "I entered a virtual world for the very first time last fall as part of a team whose mission was to launch the Serious Game Design Institute at the Santa Barbara City College island campus in Second Life. Up until that moment, I had never even heard of virtual worlds (unless you include reading Snow Crash when it came out). I think I was brought in because of my eclectic background: artist/designer/photographer/writer/professor, etc.

I've recently begun working with a code warrior/partner, though, in an attempt to devise a new way of building avatars that would enable them be brought in and out of Second Life, with the long range goal of making them compatible with other virtual worlds. We've come up with some interesting results, but we're still at the very beginning, and I'm not at all certain of where we will end up."

3. Doug Twilleager from the Wonderland group, Sun Microsystems, https://lg3d-wonderland.dev.java.net/

Doug Twilleager is the 3D Architect for Project Wonderland. Doug has worked on many 3D projects during his 19 years at Sun Microsystems. He was the implementation architect for Java 3D, as well as one of the designers of Sun's OpenGL implementation. His research interests include photorealistic rendering and advanced real-time rendering techniques.

4. Rafhael Cedeno, CTO & Co-Founder, The Multiverse Network, Inc.

Drawing upon large-scale engineering experience at companies like Netscape, Excite and Kontiki, Rafhael directs overall technology development at The Multiverse Network. Under his guidance, Multiverse has built a revolutionary virtual world development platform that is enabling new creative talent to enter an industry once limited to only extremely well funded teams.

5. Don Brutzman, Associate Professor, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, http://web.nps.navy.mil/~brutzman/, Undersea Warfare Academic Committee

Chair Naval Postgraduate School, Graduate School of Operations and Information Science (06)

Information Sciences Department and Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulation (MOVES) Institute. Co-author of X3D: Extensible 3D Graphics for Web Authors. Don has also been a major contributor to the development of the VRML and X3D ISO web 3D standards.

6. Tony Parisi, Chief Platform Officer of Vivaty, http://www.vivaty.com/

Tony Parisi, Vice President and Chief Platform Officer As Chief Platform Officer and co-founder, Tony is responsible for evolving 3d graphic technology on the Web to something that can easily and simply surprise and delight millions. With twenty years as a successful software developer and entrepreneur, Tony pioneered 3D graphics on the Web, first as co-creator of VRML and again as co-chair and editor of the X3D specification, today's ISO standard for networked 3D graphics. Parisi was also founder and CEO of Intervista Software, one of the first web 3D developers, which he went on to successfully sell to Platinum Technologies in 1998. Early in his career, Tony worked for innovators Lotus Development and BBN.

7. Peter Schikel

Peter Schickel is founder of Bitmanagement Software GmbH and leads the company since its foundation in 2002. Prior to that he was head of research at blaxxun interactive AG which was focused to the development of 3D internet software. At blaxxun he was directing the development of 3D viewer technology within 6 EC/BMBF R&D projects and built up a network of leading European Technology Companies. Focus of his work was on the transfer from R&D results into commercial products, e.g. leading to winning the Digiglobe-Award for E-Commerce of Deutsche Telecom and Focus. At the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in Munich, Germany and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) in Milan, Italy, he was working from 1992 to 1998 on the development of graphical systems in the areas of Virtual Reality, Remote Sensing (GIS) and GPS. He is accredited by the Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) for Standardization of VRML and MPEG technologies and is member of the board of directors of the Web3D consortium. Mr. Schickel holds a degree in Information Science from the University of Technology Munich (TUM).


Presentation summary

Multi-user concepts from the science-fiction novel "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson have become an important factor in engineering today. The convergence of standardized 3D community technology in combination with audio and video streaming as well as internet technology is prevailing now with novel applications in the consumer sectors as well as in industry. Real-time performance and interactivity of the 3D software technology enables the augmentation of existing products and concepts with multi-user functionality. The presentation will cast some light on the applications derived from BS Collaborate Server and BS Contact Viewer products based on multi-media standards of the Web3D consortium and Khronos consortium, e.g. VRML, X3D and Collada and their use in modern industry. Both the possibilities of the technology as well as concepts and examples of use in everyday production will be presented. Bitmanagement offers interactive and real-time 3D enabling technology based on the Standards VRML, X3D and Collada. Founded in 2002 by former employees of Blaxxun Interactive AG, Bitmanagement develops 3D visualization software that is used world-wide in products and concepts in the domains CAD, simulation and presentation. Bitmanagement supports with standardized interfaces to third party technology and project related work the integration of the 3D technology in customer projects. More information is available at www.bitmanagement.com

8. Greg Spencer, Senior Software Engineer, Google, Inc.

Mr. Spencer has worked for 18 years as a software engineer in the graphics field, for such companies as Hella, Lightscape, Cosmo Software (a Silicon Graphics company) and TiVo. He developed VRML applications at Cosmo, and developed user interfaces at TiVo and Google. He co-founded and serves on the board of Cozimo (www.cozimo.com).

He is currently working at Google, and for the last two years has been doing software development on Lively (www.lively.com), a 3D interactive chat room application that may be embedded into blogs, social networking sites, and other web pages.

Mr. Spencer originally received his B.S. in Engineering Science from Colorado State University, and later his M.S. in Computer Graphics from Cornell University.

9. Chris Thorne, PhD, MSc

Chris Thorne's recent research provides a general solution to endemic problems of limited fidelity, quality and scalability in distributed visualisation and simulation. Further information on this work can be found at http://www.floatingorigin.com.

Chris has many years experience in the software industry, primarily in graphics related work. He has developed geospatial and virtual world software and has been involved in the Web 3D industry for over a decade.

Chris organised the first MUVEMOOT for SIGGRAPH to explore the technologies of social networks and virtual worlds. He envisions these technologies merging into a form of super social network, providing a new and rich way to experience collaboration and communication with others in work, entertainment and social activities.

Chris is Virtual Worlds Architect and co-founder of Systemic.com.au. His other roles are Digital Artist, 4UMedia; Australian Ambassador, Association of Virtual Worlds and Research Associate, School of Physics, The University of Western Australia.

Hobbies: photography, martial arts.