Keynotes

John Schappert
Corporate Vice President LIVE, Software and Services for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft; former Executive Vice President of Electronic Arts and founder of Tiburon Entertainment

Session: A Future Wide Open: Unleashing the Creative Community
February 20th, 10:30AM - 11:30AM
Moscone Center, South Hall, Esplanade Ballroom

As corporate vice president of LIVE, Software and Services for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft Corp., John Schappert oversees all platform technologies and businesses, including console software, Xbox LIVE and Games for Windows.

Schappert’s team focuses on technology innovations, software development and consumer experiences for Xbox LIVE including Xbox LIVE Marketplace and Xbox LIVE Arcade, Games for Windows LIVE, XNA game development tools, MSN® Games as well as Windows LIVE™ Messenger and Windows games. He reports to Don Mattrick, the senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB).

Schappert joined Microsoft in August 2007, bringing more than 16 years experience in the games industry and a rich history of innovation in video game development to the IEB. Before coming to Microsoft, he served as executive vice president of Electronic Arts (EA) and held various other executive roles within EA, including senior vice president and chief operating officer of worldwide studios, where his responsibilities included managing EA’s worldwide portfolio of 13 studios, over 100 SKUs and almost 5,000 full-time employees. Previously, Schappert held several senior-level studio positions at EA including group general manager, and general manager of EA Canada (EA’s largest development studio) and EA Tiburon where he worked on some of EA’s largest franchises, including Madden NFL, Need for Speed, Fight Night, and FIFA.

In 1994, Schappert founded Florida-based Tiburon Entertainment, the studio responsible for the Madden NFL, NCAA Football, and NASCAR series of video games.  Tiburon was acquired by EA in 1998.  Schappert started in the industry as a programmer during the 16-bit era of gaming.

Ray Kurzweil, Inventor & Futurist

Session: The Next 20 Years of Gaming
February 21st, 10:30AM - 11:30AM
Moscone Center, South Hall, Esplanade Ballroom

Ray Kurzweil has been described as “the restless genius” by the Wall Street Journal, and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes.   Inc. magazine ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” and PBS included Ray as one of 16 “revolutionaries who made America,” along with other inventors of the past two centuries.

As one of the leading inventors of our time, Ray was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. Ray’s web site Kurzweil AI.net has over one million readers.

Among Ray’s many honors, he is the recipient of the $500,000 MIT-Lemelson Prize, the world's largest for innovation. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. And in 2002, he was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame , established by the US Patent Office.

He has received fifteen honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents.

Ray has written five books, four of which have been national best sellers.  The Age of Spiritual Machines has been translated into 9 languages and was the #1 best selling book on Amazon in science.  Ray’s latest book, The Singularity is Near, was a New York Times best seller, and has been the #1 book on Amazon in both science and philosophy.

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