Mardi Gras Conference 2009 Invited Speakers

Noshir Contractor "From Disasters to WoW: Understanding & Enabling Networks in the 21st Century" A central challenge, spurred by new developments in cyberinfrastructure, is that the nature of teams and how they are assembled has changed radically. Using examples from his research in a wide range of activities such as disaster response, Communities of Practice at Procter & Gamble, public health and massively multiplayer online games, Contractor will present a visual-analytic framework that can be used to Discover, Diagnose, and Design our 21st-century knowledge networks.	Noshir Contractor is the Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the School of Engineering, School of Communication, and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, USA. He is the Director of the Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) Research Group at Northwestern University. He is investigating factors that lead to the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of dynamically linked social and knowledge networks in communities. Specifically, his research team is developing and testing theories and methods of network science to map, understand and enable more effective networks in a wide variety of contexts including communities of practice in business, science and engineering communities, disaster response teams, public health networks, digital media and learning networks, and in virtual worlds, such as Second Life. His research program has been funded continuously for over a decade by major grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation with additional funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Rockefeller Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. Professor Contractor holds a Ph.D. from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras (Chennai). He was on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for twenty years prior to joining Northwestern in 2007.
Tony O'Driscoll is a Professor of the Practice at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Dr. O’Driscoll teaches, researches and consults 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. Dr. O’Driscoll’s research interests lie at the intersection of Business, Innovation, 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. 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.	Tony O'Driscoll "Avoiding the Routinization Trap: Leveraging Virtual Worlds for Strategic Differentiation" Too often radically new technologies are predictably applied to automate the past, bad assumptions and all. In this respect the application of virtual world technologies appear to be no different. Currently we find ourselves in the necessary but largely unproductive stage of the digital avatar in a digital environment looking at digitized documents. To move past this we must explore the sensibilities of 3D technologies that fundamentally differentiate it from other collaboration, communication and learning applications. From that point we can then begin to explore how to best apply these technologies in new and different ways to change how we live, work and learn.
Benjamin Duranske "Virtual Law for Non-Lawyers: Justice on the New Frontier" "The worlds may be virtual, but the scams, disputes, and risks are very real. For better or worse, the law is creeping into these spaces, and the new frontier on the 3D internet is becoming less like Deadwood and more like Disney's Frontierland. Attorney and "Virtual Law" author Benjamin Duranske will conduct a fast-paced guided tour of this rapidly changing landscape touching on knockoff virtual goods, virtual escorts, fraud, potential government regulation, avatar defamation, and more."	Benjamin Duranske is an intellectual property attorney and a writer. He practices law at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP, where he is helping to found and build the firm's emerging virtual worlds and video games practice group. Mr. Duranske is the author of the book Virtual Law: Navigating the Legal Landscape of Virtual Worlds (2008, ABA Publishing). He co-chairs the ABA's Committee on Virtual Worlds and Multiuser Online Games of the Section of Science & Technology Law. He also founded the SL Bar Association in the virtual world of Second Life, and writes on legal issues associated with virtual worlds at http://virtuallyblind.com. After graduating from UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law in 2003, Mr. Duranske practiced in the San Francisco area for several years, specializing in IP litigation first at Perkins Coie in Menlo Park, and then at Kirkland & Ellis in San Francisco. Before law school, he was an IT manager for four years, first at Sebaly, Shillito, & Dyer in Dayton, Ohio and then at Morris, Manning, & Martin in Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Duranske has been involved in virtual worlds his whole computing life, from pre-web text-based dial-up MUDs, to early communities in Ultima Online. Most recently, he founded the SL Bar Association in Second Life. Working as the avatar 'Benjamin Noble' in Second Life, Mr. Duranske presents seminars and participates in panels about legal issues, works with groups that are trying to establish independent judicial systems, and informally consults with in-world entrepreneurs regarding legal issues. He also participates in other virtual worlds.
Eric Call is recognized internationally as an expert in environment development, content design and production for real-time technologies. He is an award-winning Director and pioneer in Machinima, and is currently Director of Machinima for Xulu Entertainment in the Silicon Valley. As former Creative and Technical Art Specialist for Linden Lab, Eric was integral in the development of Second Life's tools, functionality, and behavior. He designed and produced Second Life's mainland terrain, Second Life's texture libraries and bundled assets, and all of Second Life's default foliage. Eric's career in computer graphics spans more than 16 years, focused mostly on aesthetic development in virtual reality and virtual worlds. His experience includes modeling, animation, texture development, effects and video production. Through his company ECMedia, Eric consults for businesses, educational institutions, non-profit organizations and governments interested in establishing a presence in real-time environments and virtual worlds. His clients include T-Entertainment (Korea), Image Solutions Network (Italy), National University of Singapore, Linden Lab, Electric Sheep Company, and more.	Eric Call "Improving Aesthetics in Virtual Worlds" Using machinima production as our example, we'll look at the artistic and technical issues in producing higher fidelity environments and content for virtual worlds. We'll cover concepts that translate to improved immersion and "suspension of disbelief" in virtual worlds, and how they benefit educators, businesses and professionals using these real-time technologies.