Panelists & Speakers
Yomi Ayeni
Creative Director – Expanding Universe
With 20 years of broadcasting and online experience, Yomi has worked on a wide variety of innovative and cutting-edge productions and projects for a range of broadcast and new media companies, including the BBC, ITV and Now TV. He created the first interactive-reality TV programme, “e-trippers” for Rapture TV in 2000. His follow up project Global Emissions, picked up the Broadcast Magazine’s - “Best Use New Media Award” in 2002. Yomi has also set up and implemented interactive television projects across multiple territories, as well as working on the first broadband TV channel (Network of the World TV). In 1998, he produced a consultation document for the BBC on how to incorporate the Internet into news research and has made several films on digital culture. In his role as Creative Director, Yomi generates ideas and concepts that promote audience participation, develop communities of interest and deliver engaging and informative experiences in the area of social entertainment.
Geneviève Cardin
Baroblik communication et multimédia
Geneviève Cardin has been roaming the worlds of television and the Web for more than ten years now, for both private (TVA) and public (Radio-Canada) broadcasters, always with her unique, scenario-driven approach. She directed her first ARG — not knowing at the time, in 2005, that that’s what it was called — as the Web extension of a ten episode TV series titled Un homme mort (One Dead Man). This ARG was multiplatform (Web, TV, magazines, newspaper, mailing lists) and attracted 90 000 subscribers. Her latest creation was The Rivard Project, which preceded the release of Aetios Production’s movie Le Piège américain (The American Trap). This bilingual project targeted a Canadian, American and French audience and took place from March to May 2008. This low budget, DIY project was a revelation on many levels and managed to attract 5000 subscribers.
Brian Clark
Founder & CEO, GMD Studios
After fourteen years at the helm of GMD Studios, Brian still has a hard time describing what he does, but it has something to do with connected communities, experimental media approaches and a number of painfully silly acronyms and buzzwords. Sometimes it involves clients, if that helps. Seems to be enjoying himself, at least. I don’t know why he asked me to write this, I’ve only been here a week and am just an assistant!
Ken Eklund
Writerguy
Ken Eklund is Writerguy, a game designer and writer. He’s the guy behind WORLD WITHOUT OIL, a massively collaborative “historical pre-enactment” of a global oil crisis, along with team members Dee Cook, Marie Lamb, Jane McGonigal, Krystyn Wells and others. WORLD WITHOUT OIL broke new ground as the first alternate reality game to confront and attempt to solve a serious and timely real-world problem: our oil dependence. Ken’s other projects include the interactive science mysteries at ScienceMystery.com, the Eagle Eye Mystery series of kids’ games, major games for Star Trek, Dungeons & Dragons and various movie licenses, and a bunch of games you never heard of. He lives in San Jose, California.
Blair Erickson
Creative Director, Millions of Us
Blair Erickson is Creative Director at an interactive agency named Millions of Us creating experiences for clients like Coke, Warner Bros, Scion, and Nike in virtual worlds and social communities. Most recently Blair finished writing and directing an ARG for Fox’s “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” series. He’s currently working on new cutting edge experiences in several very cool and very top secret virtual world platforms launching later this year. In 2007 he created a grant program for virtual product inventors, brought CNN’s citizen journalism program to Second Life and won an LACP Spotlight award for a offbeat viral campaign bringing a WWE invasion into the anime-themed world Gaia Online. Blair previously worked writing and producing television series for the SciFi Channel, Discovery Channel, E!, and the TV Guide Network.
Catherine Herdlick
Director of Game Production, Gamelab
Catherine Herdlick creates ARGs, urban games and public spectacles about things like bicycles, perfume, and ghosts. She is the Director of Production at NYC-based Gamelab and a Co-Founder of the Come Out & Play Festival, She was responsible for leading the design of the 10-week promotional ARG, Case of the Coveted Bottle, and her independent work includes Lawn Games For Life (an ARG); Bike Friendly City (a street game for bicyclists); and children’s play forts at The Kitchen gallery/performance space in NYC. She holds a BA from Wesleyan University, an MFA from Parsons School of Design, and teaches game design at City College in New York.
Evan Jones
Owner, Stitch Media
Evan Jones is the owner of Stitch Media, an interactive media production company that collaborates with traditional media creators to produce cross-media content and distributed narratives. A two-time Emmy Award winner, Jones’ work spans many industries including primetime television, radio, web, mobile and games. An ARG puppetmaster, producer and creative director, Jones has worked on the team behind the ReGenesis Extended Reality Game, Ocular Effect, Sarah Connor Chronicles and Holomove. The Bell Broadcast & New Media Fund named his work one of the ‘Top 10 New Media Groundbreakers’ in 2007 and Stitch Media was recently recognized for the “Best Mobile Enhancement” of 2007 at the Banff World Television Awards. He joins ARGFest this year directly from running with the bulls in Pamplona, so please don’t use his photo here as a ‘before and after’ comparison.
Alice Leung, Ph.D
Senior Scientist, BBN Technologies
Alice’s main research interest is using games to study and shape human behavior. At BBN, she is a co-Principal Investigator for the JFCOM/DARPA Helical Training project to apply concepts from ARGs to staff level training for long duration, intermediate intensity operations. Previously, she was the technical lead for the DMSO/AFRL Situation Authorable Behavior Research Environment project, developing a psychological research platform using Neverwinter Nights to study cultural and personality effects on teamwork. Her favorite game ever is SF0 and she’s always happy to get together with visiting players for a bit of tasking.
Jan Libby
Independent ARG Designer, Writer
Jan Libby created the popular indie ARGs Sammeeeees and Wrath of Johnson (Sam II). She also spent nearly a year working with LG15 Studios (on the Lonelygirl15 Series) as a Writer and Interactive Designer. Presently, she’s developing an exciting Alternate Reality Experience (ARE) with Kiefer Sutherland’s Eastside Entertainment, as well as designing something really, really, really “secret” and fun for the not so distant future. 
And when Jan’s not doing all the above, she’s lurking her favorite site “unfiction.com”.
Lindsay Mills
Designer/Writer, Phantom Compass
Travel Counsellor by day, Puppetmaster by night. Upon discovering ARGs back in 2003, Lindsay has immersed herself behind the scenes helping to create several successful grassroots games, including Wildfire Industries and Synagoga. She has been called upon by local and national media to comment on such buzz-worthy projects as the Regenesis Extended Reality Game and Perplex City. In 2006 Lindsay became a team member for TorGame’s Waking City, an ARG designed to lure players away from their computer and onto Toronto’s streets, and in 2008, she joined Phantom Compass as a support team member. When not chained to her computer (rare, but it has happened), you can find Lindsay curled up with a good book, or spending time with family and friends at the lake.
Patrick Möller
ARG Designer (vm-people GmbH), Editor (ARGReporter)
Shortly after opening the German news and info site ARGReporter for the German speaking ARG-audience, Patrick got in contact with the vm-people in Berlin and they had a long talk about Alternate Reality Games. Some few months later they started their very first German ARG called “Phillipp Retingshof” which promoted the new album of the music group Enigma. Other ARGs like “Push11″ (for a new book called “Das Kind”) and “Final Mill” (for Microsoft/Visual Studio 2008) followed and of course, there will be more to come.
Andrea Phillips
Independent Writer / Game Designer
Andrea Phillips is an independent writer and game designer. She was a moderator for the first community of ARG players, the Cloudmakers, and subsequently served on the story team for Perplex City. Her current projects include work with Neogence Studios on pervasive gaming and augmented reality; Madame Zee, a daily horoscope delivered through Twitter; Voices, an experiment in wiki narrative and Routes, an ARG commissioned by Channel 4 Education. She is a founding member of the IGDA ARG SIG, and serves on its leadership council. In her copious free time, Andrea writes about games, storytelling, and digital culture at Deus Ex Machinatio.
Michelle Senderhauf
Artist, Website Designer, ARG Worker Bee and Reporter for ARGNet
Being a long time gamer and artist, Michelle was fascinated by the concept behind Majestic and became a beta tester in 2001. Shortly before the game ended she met a lovely farm boy from Wisconsin. He distracted Michelle from the gaming world for a while by somehow convincing her to quit her job, marry him and have a child. Family couldn’t keep her away long, as she returned to the community to play Chasing the Wish. Michelle has since gone to the dark side and has worked on many ARGs including the grassroots game Orbital Colony, Catching the Wish, Monster Hunter Club and World Without Oil. She is currently doing contract work when she is not busy drawing, painting or making cute cupcakes to make the other classroom moms envious.
Alexander Serrano
Head of Creation, vm-people GmbH
Amos was born with an obsession for good stories. Which brought him into the advertising industries more than ten years ago working for clients such as jaguar, and volvo. Then he discovered the digital world and followed the new paths of viral marketing straight away into the magic of designing Alternate Reality Games such as the must successful ARG in Germany so far: “The Final Mill” (Client: Microsoft Germany, Product: Visual Studio 2008). There will be more to come..
Sean Stacey
President, Unfiction Inc.
Sean Stacey was intrigued enough by playing the Beast that he was convinced under great duress to help moderate Lockjaw, during which he coined the term Alternate Reality Gaming and launched Unfiction in futile attempt to try to explain it. Unfiction’s Unforum, begun about 6 months after its parent site, has become the largest source of ARG-related discussion, meta-critique, and pure, unadulterated snark in the galaxy. Sean created ARGFest-o-Con as an excuse to get some other nerds to come visit vpisteve with him in Las Vegas. Sean cut his teeth in puppetmastery behind the curtain on Metacortechs, an indie, fan-fiction ARG set in the Matrix universe. Sean writes on occasion for ARGNet, specializing in live event reporting, and is co-host on the ARGNetcast. Recently, he experienced a severe break with reality which compelled him to launch Despoiler, a wiki host and campaign tip resource for ARGonauts. When Sean isn’t keeping all of the above up and running, his constant yet pathetically inept attempts at escape weary his captors, who are this close to pitching a shit fit. Don’t make us bring back the enemator, you ungrateful bastard! Now get back to work.
Greg Trefry
Senior Game Designer, Gamelab
Greg Trefry works as a Senior Game Designer at Gamelab where he leads the game design of Gamestar Mechanic, a massively multiplayer game that teaches kids game design through play. He is also the lead designer on the Jojo’s Fashion Show franchise of casual games. Outside of Gamelab he co-designed The Case of the Coveted Bottle ARG. Greg also designs street games and serves as the director for the Come Out & Play Festival, a three-day festival of location-based games that runs annually in New York. He teaches about designing games and ARGs at NYU and Parsons. In his remaining time Greg writes about multimedia and games for various publications and wanders about Brooklyn on his bike.
Jonathan Waite
Owner, Alternate Reality Gaming Network; Independent Contractor
A player since The Beast, Jonathan has worked as an independent contractor for Stitch Media, ARG Studios and Xenophile Media, serving in roles like ‘community asset manager’ and ‘that puzzle guy’ on a few award-winning campaigns. He is also the proud owner of ARGNet, the ARG news blog, and co-hosts the ARG Netcast series with Sean Stacey. Jonathan loves to lurk on the Unfiction forums as jamesi and is ecstatic to be at his third ARGFest-o-Con. He has two wonderful daughters and a loving, devoted wife of eight years. He claims to have won an Emmy, which may or may not be true.
Lance Weiler
Writer / Director
Lance Weiler is a critically acclaimed award winning writer / director. He is recognized as a pioneer because of the way he makes and distributes his work. Millimeter magazine called Lance a “tech iconoclast” and Wired magazine named him “One of twenty-five people helping to re-invent entertainment and change the face of Hollywood.” Always interested in experimenting with new ways to tell stories and reach audiences, Lance developed a cinema ARG around his latest feature film “Head Trauma.” The cinematic ARG is a mashup of movies, music, theatrics and gaming. Over 2.5 million people experienced elements of the game across theatrical screenings, mobile driveins, mobile phones and online. Lance also splits his time as a partner in a social entertainment company called Seize the Media. STM was created to address the gap between burgeoning technologies and entertainment. STM’s clients have included Microsoft, eBay, Ubisoft, Universal and CAA among others.
