The League of Kickass Business People event – Get in the Game

This past Thursday, I attended the League of Kickass Business People event “Get in the Game”. Erich Buchegger invited me and I joined Jay Catalan, one of the co-founders of The Network Hub, as well as numerous participants (we had a full house as The Network Hub was the space sponsor for the event). Jenn Lowther was an excellent bartender for the evening, and Eric hosted the evening.

From the invite:

Are you interested in what the next generation of business development, communications and marketing looks like? Are you interested in how the business model in your business could radically change? Are you interested in a silent revolution that is already happening around you, that uses that latest in technology, in psychology that finds recruitment and engagement easy?

We’re talking about bringing together the bright eyed and grizzled veterans who need and want to move ahead. This is an event that challenges computers to be more powerful, that makes the average website look like last year’s news, that’s makes traditional market research look boring, that teaches people without people thinking they are learning.

FEATURED PANELISTS

Steve Bocska
Steve is President of Pug Pharm Productions Inc., a company focusing on social networking online games. Steve is the past lead designer, producer, and executive producer at Disney Interactive, Black Box (E.A.), and Radical Entertainment respectively, and past-President and CEO of Hothead Games, winner of the Canadian New Media Association’s award for “Most Promising New Company of 2007”.

McElroy Flavelle
McElroy has been making games for 22 years. He is the CEO of Compass Engine, a company creating the tools and services that will allow developers to build the next generation of location based games.

Ian Clark
Ian runs RealSpace, a local interactive 3D studio that utilizes video game technology to train people. This can range from simulating life threatening situations to everyday tasks.

Victor Lucas
Victor is creator, executive producer and co-host of “The Electric Playground”, creator and executive producer of one of the world’s first High Definition videogame TV series “The Art of Play” for Gameplay HD, and creator and Emmy-winning executive producer and host of “GameTap News”. Over the years he’s worked with partners including Activision, Sega, Kojima Productions, Bethesda, Disney and Warner Brothers.

Mark Magnusson
Mark is a User Experience & Creative Consultant with Magnus Media. With a 15 year career in digital media, Mark has helped clients win awards from the World Media Festival, Popvox Awards and The Webbys.

I enjoyed all the presentations, but I was most impressed with RealSpace, particularly as I think it’d be rather applicable to the work of Preventable. All the speakers were from the videogame industry, one that I rarely have any interaction. It was nice to see several of my friends, including Jose Gonzalez from Tourism BC, Victoria Revay, the kids of Design Vetica and obviously, a few of the entrepreneurs of The Network Hub, as well as Mark Busse. Some of the my photos of the evening are here. Overall, it was a great event, very informative, and I gained some really good insights.