Speakers

Philip Reisberger, Bigpoint

As Head of Games at Bigpoint, Philip Reisberger, is responsible for strategic expansion of the company's game portfolio, overall game design, and community management. In addition to his responsibilities as a member of Bigpoint's executive board, Philip is currently completing his doctorate on "Multi Massive Online Games in Social Networks" at the Drusden University of Technology.

Philip joined Bigpoint in August 2008. Before becoming Head of Games, he held various positions at the company, including International Business Manager, responsible for market analysis and international assessment models, as well as Senior Director of Corporate Strategy, where he directed the company's product and market strategy.

Julien Cordorniou, Facebook

Before joining Facebook, Julien Codorniou held several senior positions within Microsoft, in France and United States. Arriving at Microsoft France in 2005 to launch the partnership programs with publishers and startups French, Julian was appointed in 2008 at company headquarters in Redmond, to oversee the worldwide launch of BizSpark, whose mission is to identify and support high-potential startups in over 100 countries.

In May 2010, Julien Codorniou takes control of the team responsible for development and partnerships within the French subsidiary of Microsoft, to assist publishers, startups and web agencies in their innovation projects, especially in areas of mobile, Web and cloud computing.

Aged 32, graduated from Skema Business School (formerly ESC Lille) and the University of San Diego, Julian Codorniou began his career in venture capital funds in the ETF Group. Then, he joined Ernst & Young as an auditor specializing in software publishing (Avanquest, SGI, Mandriva, OpenTrust, eSearchVision, HighDeal, etc..). He is also author of the book Kelkoo.com success story, published by Pearson in 2005.

Tristan Colombet, Prizee

Self-taught computer enthusiast, he created the Prizee.com website at 17 years old before founding, a year later, in 2000, the eponymous company. Focused from the start on rewarded games, the company has experienced tremendous growth, from hiring the first employee in 2002. Today Prizee publishes an online rewarded entertainment offer available in three services: Prizee.com, historical casual games family offer: puzzle, skill and chance ones; Prizee Gold, a selection of high-end chance games for the most demanding gamers; Prizee Jackpot, a social game (Facebook & website) available in 6 languages offering a community experience and original skill games.

With 30 Million members, the Prizee network gathers more than 600,000 daily unique players that daily perform 5.3 million games. The company, based in Clermont Ferrand, employs about fifty employees.

Benjamin Joffe, +8*

Benjamin Joffe (@benjaminjoffe – benjamin@plus8star.com) is the leading expert on Asia’s digital scene. During the past 11 years, he has been part of Japan’s mobile revolution, Korea’s Internet boom and the rise of China as a digital superpower.

As CEO of the strategy consultancy +8* (www.plus8star.com) he brings the best practices from Asia’s digital scene to clients worldwide (e.g. Microsoft, IMVU, Kabam, Citibank…). Bridging technology, sociology and anthropology, his research covers virtual economies, digital third places, artificial artificial intelligence (AAI) and online social dynamics.

Benjamin shared insights in over 100 talks across 17 countries, and was selected among China’s Top 100 Mobile Industry Influencers in 2007 and 2008 as founder of Mobile Monday in Beijing.

Last, he is an angel investor in global Asia-based startups, including Cmune (www.cmune.com), world leader in 3D social games, and MyGengo (www.mygengo.com), a global human translation platform.

Vincent Vergonjeanne, Kobojo

As the CEO and Co-founder of the Paris based start-up Kobojo, Vincent is in charge of all strategic planning and overseas development of the company. From internal matters to business development, Vincent drives the thinking and the execution of the strategies.

Thanks to a large variety of experiences Vincent has developed a strong background in the development of software for mobile networks. For the account of Microsoft Research, he has worked on a variety of problematic regarding mobile networks helping him to become an expert on the topic. He developed innovative graphics interfaces and address connectivity issues on mobile networks. In 2004 he won the famous software design contest: the Microsoft’s Imagine Cup. He already gave presentations for Microsoft, but also for the French Video Game Association (AFJV) and the Game Developer Conference organized by Owlient.

Roxanne Varza, Techcrunch

Originally from Silicon Valley, Roxanne is currently the Editor of TechCrunch France, the co-founder of Girls in Tech Paris and a graduate student. After graduating from UCLA, she worked for the Invest in France Agency (l'Agence française pour les investissements internationaux) with fast growing tech startups in Silicon Valley. She then moved to Europe where she is currently finishing-up a joint master's degree at Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics in International Political Economy. She is trilingual and passionate about entrepreneurship and innovation. In addition to TechCrunch and Girls in Tech, Roxanne is also a co-organizer of the European edition of the FailCon, a conference about the importance of failure in entrepreneurship, and supporting a pan-European initiative called Le Bridge. Her personal blog is TechBaguette.com and she tweets @roxannevarza

Vincent Dondaine, Bulkypix

• Vivendi Games mobile : Senior producer on 17 Released Mobile games (such as Crash Bandicoot Nitro kart iPhone)
• 2004 : Foundation of the Vivendi Games Mobile division (with Barra Ludovic, Huynh Eric, Poidevin Simon)
• QA Manager : Built Vivendi Games Mobile as self certified
• Lead Gamedesigner on 6 Mobile Games, Leadtester on 20 crossplatform games (PC,XBOX, PS2,Gamecube, GBA)

jean François Rodriguez, Orange

Jean-François Rodriguez, Head of Gaming and Transmedia at Orange, has a wealth of experience spanning 15 years in the telecoms and media sector.

He began his career with Alcatel, winning new markets in Europe and South America. He then went on to join Gemini Consulting, assisting Media and Telecoms market players in the implementation of their strategy and organisation based on new technologies. In 2005, he joined France Telecom to take charge of Mobile TV, with management responsibility for the Personal Mobile Television project. In 2008, he was appointed to head the Strategy and Business Development Department at the Content Division, where he was instrumental in setting up the Group's initial Transmedia projects.

After successfully transforming the operator's Gaming activity, he was appointed head of this division in January 2010. A new organisation and a strategy which focuses on games distribution via the Orange networks in all the country's within the Group's footprint, while further developing strategic partnership agreements and Transmedia projects.

Alexandre Macris, Spawnapps

Alex the G(r)eek, since 1994, Paris. Alex is proud of his DirectX 1.0 t-shirt received during his first GDC in 1995. He was then optimizing routines in assembly language for a coin-up game at Cryo Interactive. After many years in the video game middleware industry, he spent 4 years exploring the "serious" industry of oil and gas. Back to the game a couple of years ago he witnessed the big shift of our entertainment industry: the web gaming. He then founded SpawnApps to bring desktop games in-browser. SpawnApps patented technology is plug-in free and handles games at binary level (no code modification/Recompilation). It still provides data streaming for fast startup. Alex is probably too shy to come and talk to you but he will be highly pleased if you do the first step.

Sebastien Flory, Urban Rivals

Sébastien started his career as a web developer for various companies like Joystick Magazine and Flipside (Vivendi). At "La française des jeux", the French National Lottery, he developed a set of games in java for the online offering of the company.

In 2003, he joined mobile games start up Acute as the Technical Director where he developed several Java and Flash Games for various mobile plateforms. A few years later, he launched Acute's flagship game, Urban Rivals, on the web. In 2007, Acute became Boostr and focused on the strong growth of the game. The same year, Sébastien was appointed CEO of the company.

With more than 14 million registered players in the world, Urban Rivals is now one of the most successful browser based games on the market. You can play the game on www.urban-rivals.com, facebook, the iphone and very soon on Androïd.

Joe Robin, Unity

Joe jumped across the sea to join Unity in Denmark, His education focused on 3d art and Game Design at the University of Teesside, Joe later landed a job using Unity where he became an active member of the community and worked on various projects, from jet ski games with purple water to a building familiarization tool for Greater Manchester Police HQ. After joining Unity 2 years ago, Joe is currently working as an artist in the Creative team.

Olivier Mathieu, Weka

As Vice President in charge of Publishing, Olivier is responsible for the economic performance of games published by Weka. He is involved from the beginning of the design phase of the products, integrating economic issues into the core game design, through to the game in operation, controlling game evolution in terms of performance. His position is at the confluent of game production, data analysis, marketing and business development.

Before joining Weka Entertainment, Olvier spent 6 years with Vivendi Games in Pacific Asia and in France where he gained invaluable experience of Business Development, the online games market and monetization. He has led business development for World of Warcraft (WoW) and Blizzard in Asia (through the launch of the games Diablo and Warcraft 3 in China and Korea, and the launch of WoW in China and South-East Asia). He was also in charge of defining the strategy of Vivendi Games in Asia in relation to the market of online games based on micro-transaction, the negotiation of licensing intellectual property to enrich the portfolio of mobile games (Bourne, SpiderWick, Cakemania, Ghostbusters, 50 Cent), and of the retail business in India and the Middle-East.

Previously, he worked as a financial analyst in an investment fund specialized in LBO Mezzanine debt. Olivier is 34 and graduated with a diploma in HEC and Political Sciences

Alban Peltier, Antvoice

Alban is CEO at AntVoice, the French Facebook apps leader driving over 4 M MAU. He has a deep experience in the communities : at iBazar (auction, bought by eBay), Sporever (sport) and MSN (Head of communication services of MSN France with the management of MSN Messenger, Hotmail, mobile services, etc.). Moreover he is an entrepreneur trough Looneo a leading social shopping player founded in 2006. He joined AntVoice in 2010 to setup and develop the company with the 2 founders, Rodolphe Mirilovic and Jerome Scola.

Albin Serviant, MXP4

Albin Serviant is Chief-Executive-Officer at MXP4, Social Music Gaming Studio. His role involves sourcing new business creation, guiding technology for monetizing the social music gaming platforms and being the official spokesperson for MXP4. Albin has been at MXP4 since the beginning of 2009.

Previously EVP/GM at Vivendi ME, Albin has strong expertise in mobile and fixed line multimedia services, with focus on marketing and content. Prior to joining MXP4, he held leading positions in start-ups including Musiwave (Sold to Microsoft) and iBazar (sold to Ebay), as well as large corporations such as PepsiCo and Sony Music. He is a graduate of the prestigious ESSEC (Ecole Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales) Business School in Paris, France.

Jonathan Zisermann, Mediastay

As COO and Co-founder of Mediastay (with Eric Bennephtali & Jérôme Balmes) , Jonathan is in charge of the sales & international development of the company. Mediastay is a leading European player in online game monetization through its online sweepstakes publisher activities (Kingolotto.com, Luckysurf.com...) and casual games (Yacado.com, Diamondsquest.com...). The games are monetized by lead generation, by the company’s own offer-based payment solution (OfferMatch) and by microtransactions. Its brands count more than 25 million members in 14 countries, with 7 million unique visitors per month (Source: Nielsen).Mediastay's monetization technologies are used on its own web sites, third-party partner web sites as well as on Facebook applications. Known for its solid expertise, Mediastay also became the first French advertising company to be accredited by Facebook to provide advertising solutions for application developers. In 2010, Mediastay generated $25 million of revenue. The company has over 60 employees based in Paris (main HQ), Brussels and San Francisco.

Laurent Michaud, IDATE

Laurent Michaud joined IDATE in 2000, and is currently the head of Digital Entertainment & Consumer Electronics Practice. Laurent acts as Director of Studies for market, analysis and strategic reports related to video games, serious games, music, digital home, entertainment devices. He provides small and medium businesses, local governments, public institutions, international organizations and big companies with technical-economic analysis dedicated to content, technological innovation, technological state of the Art, business models, business development, and industrial strategy.

Laurent has also created the DigiWorld Video Game Summit, which has been taking place in Montpellier every year since November 2002. Mr. Michaud holds a post-graduate degree in Economic and Financial Engineering from the University of Montpellier.

Loyd Melnick, Playdom

He is currently the General Manager for International Publishing at Playdom, bringing our games to Europe, Latin America, Russia and India, building an international publishing operation and over-seeing co-productions of social media games with Disney's international business units. He has been involved with development, publishing and licensing of social media (Facebook, MySpace, etc) and casual games for over 17 years.

Previously, he initiated and brokered Merscom's sale to Playdom. As a co-founder of Merscom, he helped orchestrated our pivot to social gaming. He also initiated, negotiated and oversaw Merscom's Pet Resort project, the first social game that truly integrated a major advertiser.

As Chief Customer Officer of Merscom, he built Merscom's licensing and co-production relationships with numerous media companies, including AETN Lifetime, Starz Entertainment/Overture Films, Lionsgate, CBS, CAA, Paramount, Showtime, National Geographic and Granada Ventures.

Cyril Zimmermann, Hi-Media

Cyril Zimmermann: CEO, Hi-media: created Hi-media in 1996, when he was 24 just after a master degree in Business and a degree in Politics.

Hi-media was at first a pan European advertising network in the early 2000's. Hi-media has diversified its business towards micropayments and publishing in 2003 and is now one of the biggest online media group in Europe besides being the leading advertising network and the leading micropayment solution in Europe.

Hi-media is at the heart of the one line media business and its new challenges from social networking to advertising or inventing new payment methods. Hi-media employs 500 people over 9 countries in Europe, USA and Brazil, and posted in 2010 222 million Euros in sales.