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Conference Schedules:
Social Media
| Virtual Goods |
Digital Law |
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At-A-Glance (all
schedules)
Virtual Goods Conference
Room B3
Microtransactions have broad implications for
business including companies involved in the social networks, mobile
industry, virtual worlds and games. Find out how to maximize virtual
goods opportunities for your business.
Wednesday September 23, 2009
8:00 am
9:00 am |
Registration and Networking |
9:00 am
10:30 am |
Critical Insight From A Venture Capital Point
of View
Jeremy Liew, Managing Director, Lightspeed
 Join
us for critical insight from one of the leading venture capitalists in
the space. In an onstage interview with Engage Digital's Curt Feldman,
Jeremy Liew, Managing Director of Lightspeed Venture Partners, will discuss the current social media
and virtual goods landscape, how the venture community views the
marketplace and where trends are leading. This session is a must for all
entrepreneurs, developers and business professionals.
A New Approach To Virtual Goods
Trip Hawkins, Chairman and CEO,
Digital Chocolate
 The
game industry is undergoing an exciting period of disruption from
innovative products. Trip Hawkins, Chairman and CEO, Digital Chocolate
and the founder of Electronic Arts, will announce and explain a new game
service that gives a virtual item “platform power” across a variety of
games, networks and devices. Trip has been a new media pioneer
for 30 years. Join us at Engage! for an exclusive look at what's next.
|
10:30
am
11:00 am |
Networking Break and Demos |
11:00
am
12:00 pm |
Virtual Goods: The State of The Industry
In the past couple of years, the virtual goods market has
grown to $5.5 billion globally. The North American and European
markets, which have traditionally lagged behind the Asian market,
are now the fastest growing segments of the market and are estimated
to be $700 million in 2009. This expert panel will discuss the
factors that are driving the rapid growth of the virtual goods
market, how those factors can help you develop a successful virtual
goods business model, and where the virtual goods industry is
heading in the future.
Ravi Mehta, VP of Products, Viximo
(moderator)
Anu Shukla, CEO, Offerpal Media
Atul Bagga, Senior Equity
Resarch Analyst, ThinkEquity
Hugh de Loayza, VP of
Business Development, Zynga
Noah Kagan, President and
Co-Founder, Gambit
Sebastien de Halleux, Chief Operating
Officer and Co-Founder, Playfish
|
12:00
pm
1:00 pm |
 |
1:00
pm
2:00 pm |
Analyze This: The Virtual Goods Marketplace
How big is the virtual goods marketplace and how fast is it
growing, Plus, learn how the experts track and optimize the
performance of virtual goods and merchandising.
Allison Luong, Managing Director, Pearl
Research
Vili Lehdonvirta,
Researcher, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology
Michael Gluck, President,
VGMarket
|
2:00
pm
2:30 pm |
Networking Break and Demos |
2:30
pm
3:30 pm |
Means, Motive and Opportunity: Virtual Goods and Social
Gaming
Virtual Goods have become the business model of choice for
online social environments. Top gaming companies including EA, Sony,
Playdom, Playfish, and Zynga are having success with the
free-to-play monetize-with-virtual-goods model. And social networks
like Facebook, Hi5, myYearBook and Dogster are integrating virtual
gifts into their network infrastructure. So what does it take to
build a thriving virtual goods business into your game or network?
What game mechanics and social rituals work best for driving virtual
goods sales? In this panel we'll take a deep dive into the
top-performing social games monetized with Virtual Goods, and
present key lessons for developing a successful virtual goods
business.
Amy Jo Kim, CEO, Shufflebrain
(moderator)
Sebastien de Halleux,
Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder, Playfish
Andrew Sheppard, Executive Producer, hi5
Networks
Andrew Schneider,
Co-Founder and President, Live Gamer
Andrew Trader (A.T.),
Executive Vice President, Co-Founder, Business Development, Zynga
Game Network
|
3:30
pm
4:00 pm |
Networking Break and Demos |
4:00
pm
5:00 pm |
Second Life: The Largest User-Generated Virtual Goods
Economy in the World
Last year, Residents of the immersive 3D world of Second
Life spent more than $360 million on countless items of virtual
goods - from land to designer shoes to lavish homes. The virtual
economy almost doubled in size in the past year, and at nearly $50
million per month in user-to-user transactions, the Second Life
economy is now on an annual run rate of more than half a billion US
dollars, making Second Life the largest virtual economy in the
industry.
Join Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab Chief Product
Officer Tom Hale, and Cornell University Economist Robert Bloomfield
to discuss where virtual goods are headed, what makes Second Life’s
virtual goods economy different, the challenges and opportunities of
an economy based on user-generated content, and the success stories
of Second Life entrepreneurs making real profits from their virtual
goods.. |
5:00 pm
6:30 pm |
 Conference
Evening Reception
Join us for free beer and munchies at the ThreatMetrix booth #6 in the
Exhibit Hall. Conference
Attendees: Your badge gets you beer.
>>>> Wednesday evening 5pm to 6:30pm
|
Thursday September 24, 2009
8:30 am
9:00 am |
Registration and Networking |
9:00
am
10:30 am |
 Implementing
Best Buy's Social Media Strategy
  Gina Debogovich, Community Manager, Best
Buy Co, Inc.
Jason Parker, Community Analyst, Best Buy Co,
Inc.
Best Buy is leveraging social media across the
entire corporation, rallying hundreds of employees across the
country to engage with consumers online. The most recent activity:
Twelpforce,
a collective force of Best Buy technology pros offering tech advice
on Twitter. Twelpforce is the latest addition to Best Buy Connected, which is billed as the voice of the Best Buy
Employee. Find out what's working and why in this broad
social media deployment from the major retailer.
An Interview with Mark Pincus, Founder
and CEO, Zynga
 Mark
Pincus, Founder and CEO, Zynga
Mark Pincus is a leading Internet entrepreneur, having founded and
established four successful companies. His latest venture Zynga,
founded in 2007, is the largest social gaming network, and
marries his knowledge of social networks with his desire to create
the next mass market video game phenomenon. Zynga has received $39
million in funding to date and has 32 million daily active users
playing their online social games.
|
10:30 am
11:00 am |
Networking Break and Demos |
11:00 am
12:00 pm |
Case Studies: Virtual Goods Business Success Stories
Case Study: Sports Virtual Goods Models
Sports gear represents some of the most successful branded products,
and the brand is usually highly explicit and labeled on these items.
How are sports marketing firms extending brand value into online
communities? What models are emerging for success? How are
individual players leveraging their likenesses and personal brands,
and how does that interact with team and league brands and wider
efforts to profit from virtual goods? This panel will explore early
lessons from pioneering forays by sports marketers into the virtual
goods marketplace.
Dan Jansen, CEO and Co-Founder, Virtual Greats
Minard Hamilton, Chief
Executive Officer, Six Degrees Games
Case Study: MyYearBook.com's Lunch Money Economy
This case study will focus on the ways in which social
media sites are using virtual goods to drive both engagement and
monetization, in increasingly innovative ways. Among the first
social media sites to introduce a virtual currency, myYearbook taps
into its "Lunch Money" economy to ensure cohesiveness across a
diverse application suite. We will examine myYearbook as a virtual
goods business that combines many different use cases for virtual
goods into a single, well-bundled experience.
Jeremy Zorn, Vice President of
Product Development, myYearbook
Case Study: Playdom: Understanding Players
Botkin will provide an overview of the growing virtual goods economy
within social games. Key topics will include purchasing patterns
amongst key cohorts of players, the lifecycle of a successful
virtual good, and recent sales trends and how they hint at the
future of the virtual goods industry.
Dave
Botkin, VP of Business Intelligence, Playdom
|
12:00 pm
1:00 pm |
Lunch |
1:00 pm
2:00 pm |
Leveraging the iPhone for a Virtual Goods Win
Monetizing iPhone content through virtual goods became significantly
easier with the release of iPhone 3.0 software in mid-2009, but
iPhone's directory model of discovery can't compare with the more
virally driven distribution model of social networks. The industry's
smart players, however, aren't waiting around for business to get
any easier. They are busy developing business models around goods
and the iPhone's game-hungry, tech-forward demographic. What virtual
goods solutions are being implemented today? What are the most
successful payment models? What's selling? And what are credible
numbers to work with when figuring a return on one's investment?
Develop a virtual goods strategy of your own by hearing from a panel
of experienced game and goods purveyors already vested in iPhone and
iTouch content.
Peter Relan, Executive
Chairman, Open Feint
Randy Breen, COO, SGN
Anil Dharni, Co-Founder,
Storm8
Charles Ju, CEO, PlayMesh
Dean Takahashi, Lead Writer
for GamesBeat, VentureBeat (moderator)
|
2:00 pm
2:30 pm |
Networking Break and Demos |
2:30 pm
3:30 pm |
Getting the Most Out Of Your Virtual Goods Business
You've implemented a virtual goods business, but what now? Learn how
to grow and maximize your virtual goods business utilizing this
framework to evaluate and implement your virtual goods strategy, the
4 C's of virtual goods: Context, Content, Currency, and Conversion.
Brian Balfour, Founder and VP Product
Marketing, Viximo
Sean Ryan, Partner, Loki Partners
Joe Hyrkin, VP, Sales and Business Development,
Gaia Interactive, Inc.
M. Lee Clancy Jr., VP of Product Management and
GM of Direct Revenue, IMVU
Susan Choe, Chairman/Founder, Outspark
|
3:30 pm
4:00 pm |
Networking Break and Demos |
4:00 pm
5:00 pm |
Monetization of Social Games and Applications: What Works
and What Doesn't
The online economy of social games and applications requires new and
innovative payment methods to convert users to customers. We compare
the various payment models and discuss where they excel and where
they come up short. Plus, we cover the impact universal currencies
and payments with mobile devices will have on driving the market
forward.
Lisa Rutherford, President, Twofish
Anu Shukla, CEO, Offerpal Media
Vikas Gupta, Co-founder/CEO, Jambool.com
Adam Caplan, President, Super
Rewards
David Marcus, Founder and CEO, Zong
Ron Hirson, Co-founder & SVP,
Product & Marketing, BOKU |
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