Click on the Video Below and Sample a Session from a previous Digital Hollywood event. For Additional Video Sessions, Click Here Digital Hollywood, October 27-30, 2008 Thursday, October 30th 11:05 AM - 12:20 PM Track IV: Platform Personalization: Video and Audio Preferences, Widgets, Search, Information & Commerce Kristin McDonnell, CEO, LimeLife Inc. Sudhin Shahani, CEO, Musicane Terence Swee, founder & Chief Executive Officer, muvee Patrick Koppula, CEO, ffwd Mark Shedletsky, Founder & CEO, BlueHaze Sarah Szalavitz, co-founder, 7 Robot, Moderator Sudhin Shahani, CEO, Musicane: Sudhin Shahani is an entrepreneur with a particular interest in media development (including music, film/video and animation), media delivery and related Internet technologies. He is co-founder and CEO of Musicane and parent company myMPO, with offices in California, England and India. Shahani believes in the influential power of media and has dedicated much of his efforts toward examining the potential applications of digital distribution. While studying entrepreneurship in business school, he came to realize that digital distribution is a marriage of three parties: content owners, technology providers and retailers. The Internet has enabled the relationship between these entities to evolve into something entirely new and groundbreaking. Shahani has explored new digital mechanisms for sharing music and other media with the online world while working to transform the related transactional and marketing aspects in the process. Shahani took the first step toward creating his vision in June 2003 when he and business partner Vikramaditya Jain established myMPO, an enterprise committed to revolutionizing the way digital media is transacted and shared online. myMPO is focused on tangible and sustainable technology tools to help artists individually promote and distribute their own music. Shahani and Jain bring a new philosophy to the business, in which artists are empowered by the cultural phenomenon of the Internet and online communities to digitally share their content while retaining sales, licensing and ultimate control. In January 2006, Shahani and Jain took their vision to the next level when myMPO announced the release of Musicane, an online venture that provides media producers and recording artists with the affordable tools necessary to sell and promote digital content from their own Web sites, online community profiles, blogs and nearly anywhere on the Web they choose to access. Shahani believes the Musicane service will enable independents to turn the corner with this new approach while creating an exciting new avenue for established artists and content creators as well. In addition to his work with Musicane and myMPO, Shahani has experience in the hedge fund and hospitality industries, where he specialized in developing successful business-to-business and customer relationship management services. He is a Managing Partner and founder of RTG Animate, the leading animation college in India. RTG is launching academies across India as well as a production studio, where Shahani manages a co-production fund and licensing unit to develop animated properties with international partners. He is also a partner in Animaction India, a venture to promote awareness of social issues through animation in grade schools across India. Shahani holds a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in entrepreneurship from Babson College in Massachusetts. Kristin McDonnell, CEO, LimeLife Inc.: Kristin McDonnell is a seasoned executive with more than 15 years experience in building, growing and operating software, media and telecommunications companies. She has held VP and senior positions in general management, marketing and product development for a number of Silicon Valley companies including HearMe/Mpath, AT&T’s ImagiNation Network and Electronic Arts. At Mpath, Kristin was part of the leadership team that grew the Mplayer online games service to 10 million registered members and $14 million in revenue. More recently she helped drive the launches of two online entertainment communities, Xfire and There. Kristin has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in Engineering with honors from Northwestern University. SARAH SZALAVITZ is the co-founder of 7 Robot, a digital industrial design company. 7 Robot builds engaged communities for studios, brands, and networks, bringing their cross-platform stories to a large and active audience, better, faster and cheaper. Additionally, Sarah produces www.aliveinbaghdad.org, www.awkwardsexstories.com, and www.zaproot.com. Prior to founding 7 Robot, she served as the Director of Content Development for Veoh Networks, putting together over 1000 deals with content creators and owners, ranging from MTV to Superdeluxe to Ask a Ninja. She has consulted for a variety of old and new media companies, including Next New Networks, Generate, Automatic Pictures, and Revver. Additionally, Sarah served as a development executive at Brooklyn Films and briefly practiced law. She attended the University of Southern California, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Harvard Law School. Sarah is a member of the Young Literati’s Steering Committee, the Television Academy’s Interactive Media Peer Group, the Producers Guild, and is the Founder the Delicious Digital Brunch. Sarah seeks to tell stories that ask people to think, feel or laugh and has worked in various segments of the entertainment industry, combining and distilling her interests in storytelling, democracy, and technology. Patrick Koppula, CEO, ffwd: Formerly reforming the music industry as co-founder of iLike, Patrick Koppula, now CEO of ffwd, is rethinking television for its ubiquitous, on-demand and interactive future. Patrick holds a degree in environmental science and public policy from Harvard University and is a guest lecturer at MIT Sloan on the topics of crowdsourcing intelligence and innovation. Patrick also plays guitar for a San Francisco rock cover band called Bottoms Up. Ivan Todorov, CEO, CTO and co-founder, BLITZ: Ivan drives the growth and strategic vision for BLITZ as the company’s CEO, evangelizing the promise of bringing brands to life by developing immersive, entertaining and imaginative digital experiences. He has proven instrumental in developing relationships with long-term clients such as Adobe, Google, General Electric, and Microsoft and; helping them to more effectively utilize technology to build their brands and develop compelling interactive experiences for their customers. Leveraging leading technologies, Ivan guides the agency’s development of ground-breaking campaigns. He has helped to define the processes behind BLITZ’s unique approach in creating more entertaining and compelling brand stories, by incorporating the best techniques in interactive development, video and post production, gaming and the Internet to inspire more entertaining and compelling brand dialogues. His prowess for digital advertising is a byproduct of a multi-disciplinary background encompassing visual design, UX, 3D, motion graphics, video and programming. As CTO, Ivan is also responsible for BLITZ’s technology practice, service offerings, and IT operations, ensuring the company’s award-winning engineering teams continue to deliver dynamic and advanced solutions. Over the years Ivan has established the technology backbone of BLITZ through strategic development partnerships, assets, frameworks, code libraries, documentation, training materials, and best practices knowledge base. His fascination with math motion, physics, and particle animation scripts are often reflected in BLITZ’s interactive development of fluid interfaces, games and artificial intelligence (AI) behaviors. Ivan’s passion to expand the interactive horizon extends to BLITZ’s research and development team which constantly invents new solutions and leverages the latest technologies and approaches to deliver vibrant interactive experiences. Ivan is a highly-sought technology expert, speaker and educator, frequently presenting at Flash Forward, Adobe MAX and FiTC conferences. His ten years of passion and industry experience for interactive technologies continue to fuel BLITZ’s reputation as a leader, and have resulted in a number of the agency’s awards and recognitions including Key Art, Flash Forward, Adobe MAX Award, SXSW, One Show, ADDYs, Web Award, London International Advertising Awards (LIAA), Internet Advertising Competition (IAC), and over 20 FWAs. Prior to forming BLITZ, Ivan was an Executive Producer at eStudio, a Silicon Valley-based interactive branding and animation company. There, Ivan oversaw all creative and art direction for 3D initiatives as well as production of interactive storybooks, games and websites. In his time there, Ivan helped developed the flash-to-broadcast transfer process, and worked on projects including Kelsey Grammer’s “Garry the Rat” webisodes and "The Kelly’s,” a 10 episode flash animated series for NASCAR.com and Nancy Cartwright (voice of Bart Simpson). Ivan attended Cogswell College where he received his Bachelors of Arts degree in Computer Video Imaging with an emphasis in 3D Character Animation. Mark Shedletsky, Founder & CEO, BlueHaze: Mark Shedletsky is the Founder and CEO of BlueHaze, a web and mobile social network for concert fans. Recently, Mark served as the Head of Consumer Marketing for BitTorrent, Inc, the largest P@P network in the world. Prior to joining BitTorrent, Mark was the founding Head of Marketing of MTV in Canada. In addition to launching MTV, Mark co-founded and built another multi-platform media company, Dose, and also served as its Head of Marketing. Mark has held strategic marketing roles at MTV (U.S.), Rogers Media, and Universal Pictures. In 2005, he was profiled in Marketing Magazine's 'Ones To Watch' as one of the Top 12 Marketing Professionals Under 30 and has won over 35 marketing and creative awards. Mark earned an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University. Terence Swee, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, muvee: Terence is muvee's chief deal-seeking missile, spending no less than 400 hours a year at 30,000 ft traveling to various reaches of the globe in pursuit of new business. Terence has been instrumental in identifying and negotiating multi-million dollar licensing deals with the number one players in every consumer electronic segment that muvee participates in, and putting muvee's product on the world map within 2 years of founding the company. Terence grew up playing with Lego bricks. At age 12, he built a remote control aircraft out of balsa wood from scratch. The craft took off successfully on its maiden flight, but crash-landed due to 'pilot error'. This was Terence's first lesson in business: you can build something but it doesn't necessarily mean you can also fly it! Terence has been surrounding himself with smart people ever since. Realizing that it made more sense to get others to fund his trips around the world, Terence started music lessons, and subsequently went on to win awards and a Yamaha scholarship. The avid jazz pianist now hangs around jazz clubs whenever he can on his travels, often waylaying the resident keyboardist just so he gets to jam with the band (until they call the bouncer...) Terence's insatiable curiosity led him to pursue a degree in Electrical Engineering just so he could find out how things work. In a bid to avoid working life, the Chief Opportunist somehow snagged himself a research scholarship that kept him in varsity on the pretense of doing a Masters degree, during which he published a smattering of academic papers on Wavelets and Multi Resolutional Analysis in the USA, Israel, Turkey and Australia. In that time, Terence also started Pinkspider Productions, where he composed and sold commercial music ranging from radio jingles to pre-natal training soundtracks. He also managed a stable of musicians, booking them gigs at local hotels and clubs. The extra income enabled him to buy an expensive bicycle, backpack extensively around the world, and indulge in a little bit of volcano climbing along the way. When he was finally forced to get a real job, Terence joined Kent Ridge Digital Labs where he combined his music knowledge and signal processing background to develop algorithms to aesthetically fuse voice and music using spectral manipulation techniques. He went on to develop Beat Extraction and Tempo Analysis techniques and created means to measure the 'Emotional Index' of music. These were later implemented into muvee's flagship autoProducer product. Terence soon realized it was more fun to travel the world and sell the stuff he had helped to build so, ever since muvee filed its patents in 2001, he has been working the international circuit showing autoProducer off to people. And lest anyone think the once-wacky kid has found sanity in a suit, let it be known that Terence is also an Ironman. Yes, he was crazy enough to take on the full 226km swim-bike-run triathlon challenge, and was only the 25th Singaporean to have completed it back in 2000. Lucky for him, Terence's Ironman story was published in a non-fiction title by Breakaway Books, NY, as proof.