Ben Sawyer, President and Co-Founder
DigitalMill, Inc.

Ben Sawyer is president of Digitalmill, Inc. (www.dmill.com) a Portland, ME based consulting he helped found in 1997. Digitalmill has worked on a number of game projects and served as producer for the Virtual U project, a serious game-simulation about university management that was an Independent Games Festival finalist in 2001.

Sawyer is also the author and producer of several books on games and game development and now serves as the at-large editor on game industry book titles for Paraglyph Press.

Tony O'Driscoll, Professor of the Practice in the Department of Management Innovation and Entrepreneurship (MIE)
Jenkins Graduate School of Management, North Carolina State University (NCSU)

Tony teaches in both MBA and executive education programs in the areas of strategy, innovation and technology management, services management, and management consulting.

During his 18-year industry career, Tony held several leadership positions with IBM and Nortel Networks in the areas of Strategic Business Planning, New Product and Service Development, Services Science Research and Human Capital Management. Tony was a founding member of IBM Global Service’s Strategy and Change consulting practice. In that role, where he consulted with business leaders around the world on how to create sustainable competitive advantage in an increasingly networked and knowledge-enabled global economy, Tony developed in-depth knowledge and extensive experience in leveraging technology to optimize organizational profitability and growth.

Dr. O’Driscoll’s research interests lie at the intersection of Business, Technology and Learning. His current research focuses on how emerging technologies can rapidly disrupt existing industry structure and business models and examines how organizations adapt and evolve in an increasingly turbulent and uncertain business environment. At IBM Research and now at NCSU, his research projects included the application of peer-to-peer technology to improve information sharing among workers and an examination of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing environments to study leadership in the enterprise of the future.His research has been published in leading academic journals such as Management Information Sciences Quarterly, the Journal of Management Information Systems, and the Journal of Product Innovation Management. He has also been published in respected professional trade journals such as Harvard Business Review, Strategy and Business, Supply Chain Management Review and Chief Learning Officer Magazine. Tony is also the author of Achieving Desired Business Performance, a comprehensive review of the application of Human Performance Technology (HPT) to improve workplace performance.

Dr. O’Driscoll is a frequently invited speaker for both corporate and academic engagements. He has been a keynote speaker, workshop leader, moderator, speaker and panelist at over 100 national and international conferences. Representative conference engagements include: Vizthink, Virtual Worlds, the Human Resource Planning Society’s (HRPS) Global Conference, Nielsen’s Training Leadership Summit, the Society for Information Management’s (SIM) Advanced Practices Council and Business Week’s Breakthrough Conference. Tony also frequently provides expert analysis and interviews in media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Virtual Worlds News, Chief Learning Officer magazine, Wired magazine, Training magazine and for industry analysts such as Gartner and Forrester.

Dr. O’Driscoll holds an Ed.D. in Organization Learning and an M.S. in Management from North Carolina State University.  His B.S. in Electrical Engineering is from Virginia Tech.

John Kemp, Executive Director and General Counsel - U.S. Business Leadership Network
Principal - Powers, Pyles, Sutter, & Verville, PC

John D. Kemp, a principal in the firm, has a federal law and legislative practice in the areas of disability, rehabilitation, health care, and nonprofit organizations.

Mr. Kemp has served as Chief Executive Officer of United Cerebral Palsy Associations, VSA Arts and Half the Planet Foundation, and serves in that capacity for Disability Service Providers of America, a lobbying trade association.

In March 2004, Mr. Kemp’s co-authored and co-edited book, Reflections From A Different Journey, was published by McGraw-Hill and is available in bookstores nationwide and online at Disabilities Books, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. With the Foreword by Marlee Matlin and essays from writers who were raised from birth or early childhood with their disabilities, Reflections is advice that people with disabilities want all parents to have about parenting.

Powers Pyles Sutter & Verville is a Washington, DC-based law firm that focuses on health care, education and the law of tax-exempt organizations. 

Karl Kapp, Professor of Instructional Technology
Bloomsburg University

Karl M. Kapp, Ed.D., professor of instructional technology , is a scholar, writer and expert on the convergence of learning, new technologies and business operations. His background teaching and developing e-learning classes, knowledge of adult learning theory, and experience training CEOs and front line staff provides him with a unique perspective on organizational learning.

He has provided advice on e-learning design, learning infrastructures and e-learning technologies to such companies and organizations as the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, Toys R Us, L’OREAL, Kellogg’s, Sovereign Bank, major pharmaceutical firms and Fortune 500 organizations. As a result of this work, Karl was named one of 2007's Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals TrainingIndustry, Inc.

Karl’s most recent book, Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning: Tools for Transferring Know-How from the Boomers to the Gamers published by Pfeiffer describes the learning methods necessary to transfer knowledge from the boomer generation to the upcoming gamers using new technologies tools such as gadgets, games and gizmos. The book’s web site is www.gadgetsgamesandgizmos.com.

Karl is committed to helping organizations develop a strategic, enterprisewide approach to organizational learning through his writing, keynote addresses, consulting and, most significantly, through his work as a professor of instructional technology at Bloomsburg University. Karl believes that the effective convergence of learning and new technologies like serious gaming, virtual worlds and social networking are the keys to increased productivity and profitability. You can follow his blogging at www.karlkapp.blogspot.com.

David H. Rose, Founder and Chief Education Officer, Chief Scientist, Cognition & Learning, CAST

Specializing in developmental neuropsychology and in the universal design of learning technologies, Dr. Rose lectures at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he has been on the faculty for twenty years.

Dr. Rose is the co-author with Anne Meyer of the books Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning (ASCD, 2002) and Learning to Read in the Computer Age (Brookline, 1998), and the author of numerous articles.

In 2004, he was named one of education's "Daring Dozen" by the George Lucas Educational Foundation's Edutopia magazine. Dr. Rose holds a B.A. in psychology from Harvard College, a master's in teaching from Reed College, and a doctorate in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Merrilea J. Mayo, Director of Future of Learning Initiatives
Kauffman Foundation

Merrilea J. Mayo is the Director of Future of Learning Initiatives at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Her portfolio of activities includes video-game-based learning, educational virtual worlds, and cell-phone delivered learning. Previously, from 2001-2006, Dr. Mayo was Director of the Government-University-Industry Roundtable (GUIRR) of the National Academies. GUIRR focused on trisector issues such the science and engineering workforce, intellectual property rights, the impacts of globalization on national competitiveness, deemed exports regulations, and national-laboratory university collaborations. Dr. Mayo’s earlier career included two years at Sandia National Laboratories, eleven years on the faculty of the Pennsylvania State University, and a founding role in both ASTRA (an advocacy organization for the physical sciences) and the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership (an organization devoted to improving the ability of companies and universities to conduct joint research). Dr. Mayo is a materials scientist and engineer by training, having received her Ph.D. in that field from Stanford University in 1988, publishing approximately 80 technical articles, and serving as the Materials Research Society’s President in 2003.

Doug Harward, Managing Partner & CEO
TrainingIndustry.com

Doug Harward is the Founder of Training Industry, Inc.  Mr. Harward is internationally recognized as one of the leading strategists for training and outsourcing business models. His consulting expertise has helped global companies introduce training outsourcing as a business strategy while assisting training companies to position their brands for training outsourcing services. He is respected as the industry's leading authority on competitive analysis for training outsourcing services and works with international clients as well as new business start-ups in building training organizations.

Mr. Harward began his outsourcing career as the Global Director of Employee Training for Nortel Networks where he led the industry's largest global comprehensive training outsourcing engagement and repatriation with PricewaterhouseCoopers from 1999 through 2002. While at Nortel Networks, he received the Chairman’s Global Award for Community Service in 1996 for his work in creating a regional conference for corporations and public schools to study learning organization strategies. He has been a training professional for over 20 years.

Mr. Harward received an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and a BSBA in Marketing from Appalachian State University. He has published numerous articles on training outsourcing and intellectual property management and is a frequent speaker at ASTD, TechKnowledge, and IEEE conferences.

www.trainingindustry.com

David Gardner

Mr. Gardner is a serial entrepreneur with over twenty-five years of experience in creating and building technology companies. He has been the founder or co-founded of nine successful companies including ProviderLink, Peopleclick, OSC, Report2Web, DBBasics, Microclimate Technologies, BuildLinks, and OnSphere Corporation. Mr. Gardner's start ups have raised over $60 million in venture capital. He has demonstrated a record for consistency across multiple industries and markets without a single startup failure or loss of an investor’s capital.

Experienced in taking IT products and Internet-service model companies to market, Mr. Gardner has served on several boards and is a popular conference speaker. He has published several forward thinking white papers and articles on technical, marketing and managerial topics. He founded and launched the first hosted “software as a service” enterprise application in North Carolina long before the SAS model was recognized as an application delivery method or best practice.

Mr. Gardner has also worked as a Vice President for Compuware, a multi-billion dollar corporation, after it acquired ProviderLink, a healthcare communications technology company Gardner founded.

Besides several years of computer science and business related post graduate studies at NCSU, Mr. Gardner also holds degrees in Music, Philosophy and Divinity.

In 2007 Mr. Gardner’s founded his ninth start up, The Venue Network, Inc. TVN is a new media company that is merging 3D virtual world technology with social networking and learning applications.

Contact Information
dgardnerf@thevenuenetwork.com
919.244.3048

Felicity Spowart, Program Director
IBM

Felicity Spowart is Program Director for Strategy & Business Planning in IBM's Human Ability and Accessibility Center. The Center’s mission is to enable human capability through innovation, so all people can reach their potential, regardless of age or ability. She is charged with worldwide responsibility for strategic planning, industries integration, portfolio and channel management by integrating the business value into IBM's mainstream groups as a business advantage.

She actively partners with external organizations to drive and promote the mainstream adoption of IT adapting to the needs of everyone - partnerships include CAST, AAPD, AFB, HLAA, NFB and many more.

She has led many initiatives evolving learning as a business strategy starting in EMEA and expanding to international, leveraging technology innovations.

Dr. R. Michael Young, Associate Professor
North Carolina State University

R. Michael Young is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at NC State University, where he directs the Liquid Narrative research group. Michael is also the co-director of the NCSU Center for Digital Entertainment. His work focuses on the development of core AI techniques for use within virtual environments, with applications to entertainment, training, education and other interactive contexts.

Before joining the faculty at NC State, Michael was a post-doctoral fellow at Carnegie-Mellon's Robotics Institute and has over seven years experience working in industrial research labs. He holds a Ph.D. in Intelligent Systems from the University of Pittsburhg and an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University. In 2000, Michael received a National Science Foudnation CAREER Award, NSF's highest honor for young scientists and engineers. In 2005, Michael recieved an NC State Outstanding Teaching Award from the NCSU OFfice of the Provost and was elected to the NCSU Academy of Outstanding Teachers.

Research Interests
Artificial intelligence, including planning and plan recognition, natural language processing and the development of computational models of human-computer interaction, task-related discourse, interactive narrative and the design of intelligent systems in computer games.

Jerry Heneghan, CEO
Virtual Heroes Inc.

Mr. Jerry Heneghan is the founder and CEO of Virtual Heroes Inc. Most recently, Jerry served as an Executive Producer for the America’s Army Game Project (www.americasarmy.com) focusing on the creation of training applications based on the game. Prior to starting Virtual Heroes, Jerry was a Program Manager in the Technology Assisted Learning Division of the Research Triangle Institute (RTI). While at RTI, Jerry was responsible for creating and fielding several new medical training technologies for first responders. Before his work at RTI, Jerry was a Game Producer at Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Entertainment. Prior to work in the interactive entertainment industry, Jerry served as a U.S. Army Aviator (AH-64 pilot) in assignments all over the world. Jerry holds an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, a BS in Engineering from the U.S. Military Academy.

www.virtualheroes.com

Richard Kristof
Co-Founder – President and CEO

Mr. Kristof has over 16 years of professional training development experience and has served in several executive management positions. He provides strategic planning, oversees sales and marketing, including client relations for ARI. Mr. Kristof is an evangelist for advanced learning technologies including next generation corporate university infrastructure and serious gaming for adults. He co-founded the North Carolina Advanced Learning Technologies Association and currently serves on the board and as its Treasurer.

Before founding ARI, Mr. Kristof was Vice President, Worldwide Business Development at Global Knowledge in Cary, North Carolina from September of 1997 to December of 2002. During that time, he was instrumental in the acquisition of seven businesses to the company’s portfolio and successfully started and ran a division that operated in over twenty countries. He also co-created and published two best-selling technical book series, which sold over 1.4 million copies. His expertise includes structuring profitable partnerships and launching new business initiatives. Before Global Knowledge, Mr. Kristof was Vice President and Chief Logistics Officer for National Technology Group.

A. Jackson Stenner, Ph.D., Chairman, CEO and Co-founder
Metametrics

Dr. Jack Stenner co-founded MetaMetrics, Inc. in 1984 with the first of five Small Business Innovation Research grants from the National Institutes of Health. The company has focused on developing new ways of matching students to targeted material in order to foster better educational practices and improve learning.
Recognized as one of the world’s foremost psychometricians, Dr. Stenner has published more than 60 papers, monographs and books, primarily on statistical and evaluation methodology. He was a co-principal investigator, with Eleanor E. Sanford-Moore, Ph.D., MetaMetrics’ vice president of research and development, on the Quantile Framework. Under Dr. Stenner’s direction, MetaMetrics developed The Lexile Framework for Writing, which measures student writing ability and growth.

Dr. Stenner received his Ph.D. in educational psychology, with an emphasis in measurement, research design and evaluation methodology, from Duke University, and dual undergraduate degrees in psychology and education from the University of Missouri–Saint Louis. He has taught graduate seminars at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Jeffrey Marc Taekman, M.D.
Assistant Dean for Educational Technology
Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC

Dr. Taekman is the Assistant Dean for Educational Technology, the Director of the Human Simulation and Patient Safety Center, and an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology at Duke University. He is a graduate of Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He completed his internship, residency and fellowship training in neuroanesthesia with an emphasis on neural monitoring at the Penn State University School of Medicine. He joined the Duke faculty in August of 1999.

In addition to his busy clinical practice, Dr. Taekman works industriously to expand the use of simulation in healthcare education and patient safety. He is active both locally and nationally on subjects related to immersive learning and patient safety. Dr. Taekman was a Founding Trustee, Secretary, and served on the Board of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare. He is a member of the Committee on Simulation Education and chairs the Subcommittee on Curriculum Development of the American Society of Anesthesiology. He is a member of the editorial board of Simulation in Healthcare: the journal of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare. Dr. Taekman’s research interests include a broad range of patient safety topics including the use of immersive learning in healthcare team training, improving the safety and quality of clinical trials, and improving the quality of information on the internet.

Randy Brown CTO,
Virtual Heroes Inc.

Mr. Randy Brown is the Virtual Heroes Chief Technology Officer. Randy has an MS in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BS in Computer Science from Oklahoma State University. Prior to joining Virtual Heroes, he developed interactive 3D graphics software at Amoco, Digital Equipment, Ex Machina, Data General, SAS Institute, Southpeak Interactive, and the Research Triangle Institute of North Carolina. Randy also directed scientific c oil exploration, graphics library, visualization, training, education, simulation, and gaming content for a wide range of commercial, government, and private organizations.

Jamie Kirkley, Ph.D.
Instructional Game Designer/Researcher
Information in Place, Inc. (IIPI), Bloomington, IN

For the past five years, Jamie’s focus in on the design and research of serious games that focus on complex learning, problem solving, and decision-making.
She has been part of three of IIPI’s serious game design efforts: 1) an Unreal-based Virtual Astronaut Learning Platform to support STEM learning for middle school students (developed with Virtual Heroes, Inc.); 2) a Flash-based HAZMAT C&C game to teach control and containment to first responders; and 3) a Torque-based game created for the U.S. Army Research Institute to test soldiers’ tactics for using next generation small unmanned ground vehicles.

Jamie specializes in using methods of cognitive task analysis (CTA) to elicit and map expertise as a foundation for game design, as well as the use of problem based game design approaches. To keep it all real, she teaches a video game design class to a local group of middle school students each semester. She is also an adjunct assistant professor in Indiana University’s instructional systems technology program.

She earned her Ph.D. in from Indiana University in 2006, and her dissertation focused on how to design and use embedded scaffolds to support virtual learning.
Her favorite games are Rock Band, Ghost Recon, and anything on the Wii!

www.informationinplace.com/games

Len Annetta, Ph.D.
North Carolina State University

Dr. Annetta is an assistant professor of Science Education at North Carolina State University. His research has focused on distance learning and the effect of instructional technology on science learning of teachers and students in rural and underserved populations. As technology continues to rapidly emerge and the push to be connected through the World Wide Web becomes more and more critical, it has become obvious that there needed to be a strategy to deliver science content, synchronously, over the Internet.

Building from his understanding of online, multiuser video game play, Dr. Annetta began to use his past programming knowledge to build a virtual environment that became the platform for his current research. He has designed and created a synchronous, online 3D virtual environment for distance learning courses offered at North Carolina State.

Sasha Barab Associate Professor in Learning Sciences, IST and Cognitive Science
Indiana University

He also holds the Barbara Jacobs Chair of Education and Technology, and is the Director of the Center for Research on Learning and Technology. The intent of his research is to develop rigorous claims about how people learn that have practical, pedagogical, theoretical, and ethical implications.
His current work involves the research and development of rich learning environments, frequently with the aid of technology, that are designed to assist children in developing their sense of purpose as individuals, as members of their communities, and as knowledgeable citizens of the world. As one example, the Quest Atlantis project is a learning and teaching project that leverages strategies used in the commercial gaming environment to develop a 3D multi-user environment to immerse children, ages 9-12, in educational tasks. Barab has received funding from the National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administion, the MacArthur Foundation, and various corporate sponsors.

Amar Pravin Patel, Manager, Medical Simulation Center
WakeMed Health & Hospitals

Amar Patel is Manager of the Medical Simulation Center at WakeMed Health & Hospitals. Prior to this position, Mr. Patel served as an Advanced Life Support Program Instructor and the Project Manager of Medical Simulation for the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute at the University of Maryland, College Park. In this role he was responsible for developing new curriculum, as well as integrating medical simulation into all of the Advanced Life Support (ALS) Programs. He was the lead developer of simulation scenarios and technical simulation expert at the local and state level. Mr. Patel has taught numerous instructor courses, including ones offered on an international circuit. He has presented at several conferences, including JEMS EMS Today, and the Human Patient Simulation Conference. Mr. Patel is currently involved in simulation based research projects that focus on integration and implementation of computer-based, haptic, and full-immersion simulation into healthcare curriculums.

Amar is a nationally registered paramedic and fire fighter, maintaining over seventeen certifications. He most recently served as a paramedic, fire fighter, hazardous materials technician, and an instructor with the Baltimore County Fire Department, in Maryland, from 2001-2007.

Mr. Patel holds a Masters of Science from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in Emergency Health Education and has been involved in medical simulation since 2003.