Opening Welcome Address
Mr Thomas LIM: Senior Director (Special Programs) - Media Development Authority of Singapore

Day 1 Keynote Address (Via Video-Conferencing)
Mr Ben SAWYER: Co-Founder - DigitalMill, Inc (Portland, US)
Co-Founder: Serious Games Institute (SGI, US)

Mr Mervyn LEVIN: Founding Director - Levering Ltd (UK)
Asia Representative: Serious Games Institute (SGI, US)
Corporate Industry Advisor - Sheffield University (UK)
Senior Expert - European Commission (China)

Mervyn Levin is Founding Director of Levering Ltd consulting widely on innovation, trends and international partnerships in the digital content and creative industries with leading European and Asian organisations across government, the research community, industry and the financial sector.

Mervyn’s extensive experience and influential international network in both the public and private sectors gives him a deep insight into policy and strategic developments, together with a wide ranging understanding of business models, including outsourcing, across multiple sectors.  He also has a thorough grasp of the financing, monitoring and management of research across the digital media/content industries, along with their associated technologies.

Mervyn’s roles include Board membership of several publicly funded Collaborative R&D Board consortia and assessing on behalf of the UK Government’s Technology Strategy Board funding bids from industry for research into new technologies, including serious games.  He also provides strategic advice and market intelligence to the European Commission, Chinese Government, Sheffield University and company start ups, across the digital content industry.  He represents several UK and Chinese organizations.  Clients include the UK’s Serious Games Institute. In these roles, he travels widely, sharing his time between Asia and Europe and exploiting synergies across sectors and disciplines in rapidly converging markets.  He frequently presents talks on serious games and the digital content sector as a whole at business conferences, government meetings, company seminars and universities across Asia and Europe.  He also publishes on these areas in peer reviewed journals.  

From 2002 to 2007, Mervyn was Head of Digital Content Policy at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – formerly DTI, leading the UK Government's policy for the digital content industries.  This involved shaping the national agenda in close conjunction with industry at a time of massive growth and exciting change in the broadband and media landscape. Mervyn spent 22 years at Reuters between 1980 and 2002 where his last role was e-Service Director, based in Geneva, managing the creation of a global customer service organisation for e-business.  In addition to being based in London, his assignments included country, product and marketing management for 5 years in Latin America.

Mr Toru FUJIMOTO: Founder - Serious Games Japan Community
Lecturer (Serious Games Design) - Tokyo Polytechnic University (Japan)

Toru is the founder of the Serious Games Japan community, which was founded in 2004.

Toru has also authored several books and articles regarding serious games, including the first Japanese serious games book titled "Serious Games: Transforming Education and Society through Digital Games".

He has been studying serious games as a visiting scholar at Ritsumeikan University and working as a lecturer teaching serious games design at Tokyo Polytechnic University. He is also a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) in the Instructional Systems program at Pennsylvania State University.

Mr Donnie KIM: Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer - CJ Internet (South Korea)

Donnie is the Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of CJ Internet. He is responsible for marketing and new business development. Ever since the time he joined the company, he has managed marketing innovations from the conventional practices to interactive and targeted ones. As a part of new business development, he is now overlooking the development of an English Learning Online Game based on “Let’s Go English” of Oxford University Press.

Prior to joining CJ Internet, Donnie was Chief Sales Officer of Yahoo Korea and was responsible for brand advertising (display banner ads) and search marketing sales (key words ads) In terms of online contents industry he has experience dealing with niche contents websites, global portal and also online game business. Previously, he founded and operated his own internet startup company and worked for Daewoo Group Corporate Office and Daewoo Osaka Branch. Donnie graduated from Seoul National University in February 1990.

Mr Bastiaan KÖNNING: Project Manager, Game Development, Department of Innnovation & New Media - Netherlands Public Broadcasting (Netherlands)

Bastiaan is a consultant and designer in the field of emerging media, communities and gaming on a wide variety of subjects, such as video on demand on mobile, the changing role of journalism, media and gaming, management and web 2.0, media in public transport, the digital classroom. Works for European Public Service Broadcasters, Dutch Government Offices, Universities and a wide variety of private businesses.

Bastiaan is also a Lecturer Interactive Media at Artez, Academy of Art and Design and at Twente University. At the moment, he is in charge of Tweenz, a project for 9 to 12 year olds, connecting tv, radio, gaming and communities.

Tweenz is an initiative of NPO, Netherlands Public Broadcasting and EBU, European Broadcasting Union.

Mr Norihisa WADA: General Manager, Project Development Division - IE Institute Co., Ltd (Japan)

Norihisa joined IE Institute in January 2009 and is currently the General Manager of the Project Development division. Prior to joining IE Institute, Norihisa was a pioneer member of Advanced Media, Inc. (specialising in voice recognition solutions, the company successfully went public in the Japanese main stock exchange market (2005). There, he served as a Senior Manager of Entertainment & Education / Mobile Business Department and also as a Secretary for Business Strategy Management Department. In the early years of Advanced Media, he had worked closely with theCarnegie Mellon University to develop and market state-of-the-art voice recognition technology.

In 2004, Norihisa met his current employer and developed his first language learning product with Japanese-English voice recognition engine which triggered his intellectual curiosity for the emerging educational market. In his current role, Norihisa Wada seeks for new business areas which will maximize current IE Institute Co., Ltd. assets and to make use of his successful experience in a venture business. His first project with the company was to launch the first Official TOEIC preparation software for Nintendo DS “TOEIC Test Official DS Training”.

Day 1 JOINT PLENARY CHAIR
Mr Shivaji DAS: Director - Frost & Sullivan (SINGAPORE)

Day 1 JOINT PLENARY MODERATOR (and Day 2 speaker)
Mr Aroon TAN: Managing Director - Magma Studios PL (Singapore)
Founder - Interactive Digital Dreams (Singapore)
President - Games Exchange Alliance (GXA Singapore)

Day 2 Keynote Address
Mr Philip TAN: US Executive Director - Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab (US Operations)

Mr Sidddarth JAIN: Chief Creative Director - Playware Studios Asia PL (Singapore)

As Chief Creative Director of Playware Studios Asia, Siddharth deals with game design, production, technical art & music direction. He heads a technology, platform and genre independent team that has successfully developed casual, card and multiplayer arena games released worldwide and also a range of serious games for the institutions such as Singapore's Ministry of Education, Singapore Management University and the Center for Learning Innovation, Department of Education Technology, NSW, Australia.

Siddarth is a media veteran who has worked on triple digit hours of television programming, double digit game titles, multimedia applications, game engines and tools. He is a visiting faculty to University SIM and Nanyang Technology University and is on several agency and industry advisory panels.

Mr HAN Bing: General Manager - Shanghai gLearning Information Technology Co., Ltd (China)

Han Bing holds a Master’s Degree, graduated from National University of Defense Technology. He has over 10 years experience in software, Internet and game industry.

Han Bing once held the post of senior executive in several companies, member of the National 863 Online Game Strategy Research Team in China.

Han Bing founded Zlong Games Info. Technology Co., Ltd in 2005 and held the post of General Manager. In his role, he is responsible for the overall management and product development of the company.

Ms Adeline TAN: Senior Project Manager - Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency [Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands] (Singapore office)

Adeline serves as Senior Project Manager for the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA).  Together with the Area Director, she helped to set up the Singapore office in 2007 and build up networks and processes.

Adeline also has on hand specific information on doing business in Europe across a wide range of industries ranging from gaming, logistics, biomedical and the water industry just to name a few. She was speaker at TGX 2009 sharing with companies on potential Europe inroads for the Gaming industry. In her current position, she assists and liaises with local companies planning to expand, relocate or diversify their business in the Netherlands’ and the EU market.  Ms Tan facilitates this through one-on-one meetings, hosting of investment-related seminars, and dissemination of appropriate information to interested groups and at partnering networking platforms on behalf of NFIA.  

Prior to joining NFIA, she worked in the oil industry covering downstream operations. Ms Tan holds a bachelor’s degree in business, with a specialization in International Business and Marketing.

Dr Timothy MARSH: Assistant Professor, Communications & New Media Programme, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences - National University of Singapore (NUS Singapore)

Scrawl Studios is a place where characters of all sorts come to play. The team of talented (and sometimes bizarre) individuals who form the core of their thriving studio, where they give free reign to their imagination and creative energy to produce some of the most cutting edge and funky work on TV, the Web and print. From its birth in 2002, Scrawl has grown to become one of the most prolific animation companies in Asia with original series sold around the world to broadcasters such as Nickelodeon, YTV, ABC and Discovery Kids, among many more. The studio specializes in conceptual development, character design and high-end traditional and digital animation for TV, commercials, Web and new media platforms. Other expertise includes illustration and comics production. Scrawl strives to be the premier Asian producer of animation content and a leading creative force behind a library of globally-successful intellectual properties that entertain and resonate with audiences the world over.

EyePower Games brings innovation to  21st century learners by developing teaching and learning tools, with a key focus in the area of language skills acquisition.  These tools:

• Allow teachers to seamlessly create multi-dimensional, multi-modal interactive learning spaces that incorporate the full range of digital media, enhancing the language-media nexus for language teaching across the curriculum,
• Encourage creativity in learners and provide engaged learning environments that foster collaborative and peer-to-peer learning,
• Foster family involvement in the learning process, even in cases where great distances separate the family members.

EyePower Games aims to establish itself as a trusted household brand that is synonymous with delivering quality products that can be used in schools and in homes. To achieve its goal, EyePower Games will continue to build close relationships with strategic partners in both the education and IT fields. As of January 1, 2009, Arizona State University (ASU) has officially become a shareholder of EyePower Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of EyePower Games.  This strategic partnership allows ASU’s expertise, resources and connections to reinforce EyePower Inc.’s strengths in innovational learning technologies, helping it to reach its goals in the U.S. more quickly.

Ednovation stands for education and innovation. The corporate logo of the human mind depicts the source of learning and creativity.  We are a leading e-learning company in Asia, having been in business since 1991 and backed by blue-chip corporate investors from Asia, US and Japan.  Headquartered in Singapore with presence in China and Malaysia, our core business is in providing quality and innovative learning programmes for pre-schools. We are one of the major developers of e-learning solutions in Singapore, with a pool of staff committed to R&D.