Plenary Speakers
Jian Ghomeshi
Broadcaster
CBC Radio
Producer
Jian Ghomeshi Productions
Jian Ghomeshi is an award-winning broadcaster, writer, musician and producer. He is the host and co-creator of the national daily talk program, Q, on CBC Radio One and CBC TV. Since its inception in 2007, Q has garnered the largest audience of any cultural affairs program in Canada and has become the highest-rated show in its morning time slot in CBC history. Q is also now broadcast across the United States on PRI.
Jian has interviewed an array of prominent international figures from prime ministers to sports stars and cultural icons. His feature interview subjects on Q have included Woody Allen, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Barbara Walters, Tom Waits, William Shatner, Jay-Z, Al Gore, Margaret Atwood and - in a television world-exclusive - Leonard Cohen.
As a writer and interviewer, Jian has been published in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The National Post, El Mundo and The International Herald Tribune. In September 2012,
Jian released his first book, 1982,
a literary memoir based on a 14-year-old’s desire to
be David Bowie.
As a singer, songwriter, and musician, Jian was a member of multi-platinum selling folk-rock group, Moxy Früvous. Jian continues to write and produce music through his company, Jian Ghomeshi Productions.
In 2012 Jian was awarded the prestigious New York Festivals international radio broadcasting gold medal for “Best Host.” He was previously awarded the gold medal for “Talk Show Interview” of the year for his feature length world-exclusive with Leonard Cohen, in 2010. NOW Magazine named Jian “Best Media Personality” in TV or radio, in the fall of 2009.
Terry O'Reilly
Broadcaster
CBC Radio
Writer / Director
Pirate Toronto
Terry O'Reilly is a Canadian broadcaster, best known as the host of the CBC Radio One series O'Reilly on Advertising, The Age of Persuasion, and most recently Under the Influence.
Terry spent 10 years as an award-winning copywriter at several of the most creative advertising agencies in Canada before co-founding Pirate Radio & Television in 1990, specializing in audio production for radio and television commercials. Pirate has grown to include 8 recording studios in Toronto and New York City.
Terry has won a few hundred national and international awards for writing and directing. Marketing Magazine named him one of Canada’s “Most Influential” marketing people. When he’s not creating advertising, he’s talking about it, first as the host of the award-winning CBC/Sirius/WBEZ Chicago radio series, “The Age of Persuasion” - with close to a million listeners a week in Canada alone. The Age of Persuasion podcast was chosen as the “Best New Podcast of 2011” by iTunes, and was awarded the Grand Prize trophy at the New York Radio Festivals in both 2011 and 2012. He co-authored the best-selling book “The Age of Persuasion” published in Canada, the U.S. and China in 2009.
He has been given two lifetime achievement awards, one from the Advertising & Design Club, the other from the Television Advertising Bureau of Canada.
Roel Vertegaal
Professor
Queen's University
Roel Vertegaal is a Dutch/Canadian designer, scientist and musician who develops advanced interactive technologies. He is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at Queen’s University in Canada, where he directs the Human Media Lab (www.humanmedialab.org), a boutique laboratory designed by Karim Rashid. Roel studied Electronic Music at Utrecht Conservatory in The Netherlands, and holds a Master's in Computer Science and PhD in Human Factors. Roel founded the alt.chi sessions at the annual ACM CHI conference, co-founded the ACM Eye Tracking Research and Applications conference and chaired the ACM Tangible, Embodied and Embedded Interactions (TEI 2012) conference. Roel is also CEO of Xuuk, Inc, a startup that markets ubiquitous eye input.
Vertegaal’s inventions include sound maps for perceptual sound synthesis (1990), first inline browser webcam (1995), eye tracking input for teleconferencing (1997), ubiquitous eye input sensors, Attentive User Interfaces (2003), and metrics for digital signage (2007). He also pioneered the first interactive spherical and cylindrical (2008) interactive systems and the first pseudo-holographic 3D motion parallax telepresence system (2012). His current work is on Organic User Interfaces: flexible and paper computers, bendable smartphones and thin film tablet pcs (PaperWindows in 2004, PaperPhone in 2010 and PaperTab in 2012). His empirical contributions range from studies on the effect of eye contact on turn taking in group conversations, to Fitts' Law studies of flexible display interactions.
Women in Games Panel Speakers
Cecily Carver
Co-director
Dames Making Games
Cecily Carver is a software professional who co-founded Dames Making Games, a feminist women-in-games organization, in 2011. Through incubators, game jams, and speaker socials, Dames Making Games helps women with and without technical backgrounds to develop their first video games, introduce their work to the community, and deepen their involvement in the gaming world. Cecily holds a B. Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Alberta and currently lives in Toronto.
Brenda Baily Gershkovitch
CEO
Silicon Sisters Interactive Inc.
Brenda Bailey Gershkovitch is the CEO of Silicon Sisters Interactive, a female focused studio building top quality games for women and girls, and formerly the CEO of Deep Fried Entertainment. Launched in May 2010, Silicon Sisters has successfully introduced a tween series called School26 to iO/S, Android, PC and Mac. The studio is currently working on a Romance series of Casual Games called “Everlove”.
Brenda frequently speaks at Conferences on a wide range of issues including: women in games, change management, and emerging video game markets. She is a founder of Women in Games Vancouver, a past board member of the Canadian Video Game Awards and Advisory Board member of GDC Canada, and an active member of “GameChangeHERS” a group of women gaming executives bringing change to the industry.
Grace gtz
Co-founder,
Fat, Ugly or Slutty
Grace (a.k.a. Greater Than Zero, or gtz) is a co-founder for the website Fat, Ugly or Slutty. Started as a joke by a group of friends, the site catalogues the awful, horrific, abusive, weird, crazy, creepy, and somehow hilarious things gamers say to one another. Fat, Ugly or Slutty is named for the only 'logical' reasons that women would choose to play online video games.
While the common advice in the face of harassment and abuse is simply "Don't Feed The Trolls," Grace has been outspoken about modifications that game developers can make to improve the online gaming community. Having spoken at PAX, Geek Girl Con, Feminists in Games, as well as to the BBC World Service, Global 16x9 and the New York Times, she advocates for a greater focus on in-game systems and tools to manage player harassment, promoting a better online experience for everyone.
Jennifer Jenson
Professor, Pedagogy and Technology
York University
Jennifer Jenson is a Professor of Pedagogy and Technology in the Faculty of Education at York University. She is the outgoing president of a scholarly society to support digital games reserach in Canada and Internationally, the Canadian Game Studies Association. She is also co-Editor of the society's journal Loading. Her research and publication includes work on gender and technologies, gender and digital gameplay, players and identities in MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) like World of Warcraft, Eve Online, and Rift, technology and education, and technology policies and policy practices in K-12 education in Canada.
In addition, working with a team of people at York, Simon Fraser University and Seneca College, she has designed and developed several educationally focused digital games in her Play:CES lab at York including a Baroque music game for Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in Toronto. Other games she has developed include: "Epidemic: Self-Care for Crisis" and an iPad/iPhone game "Compareware".
Anita Sarkeesian
Media Critic and Creator,
Feminist Frequency
Anita Sarkeesian is a media critic and the creator of Feminist Frequency, a video webseries that explores the representations of women in pop culture narratives. Her work focuses on deconstructing the stereotypes and tropes associated with women in popular culture as well as highlighting issues surrounding the targeted harassment of women in online and gaming spaces.
Anita lectures and presents at universities, conferences and game development studios internationally. She has been interviewed and featured in publications such as Forbes, Wired, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail and The New York Times. Her videos are freely available via the Feminist Frequency YouTube channel and widely serve as educational tools in high school and university classrooms.
Ethics Panel Speakers
Robert Basso
Chair, Research Ethics Board
Wilfrid Laurier University
Robert Basso teaches group work courses and an elective of social work practice with children and adolescents. He is currently conducting research in the areas of violent children in kindergarten with a child psychiatrist, and group work theory. His practice experiences include working in medical and children's mental health settings, addictions and social work practice in employee assistance programs. He is actively involved in the community as a member of the Advocates for Male Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse.
Jacquelyn Burkell
Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of Research, Faculty of Information and Media Studies
University of Western Ontario
Jacquelyn Burkell is an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of Research in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario.
Her research focuses on the interaction between users and information, with particular emphasis on the influence of cognition on information use. Specific aspects of this research include examinations of information credibility assessment, the use of information in decision making, and human-computer interface design. Current projects include a review of the impact of decision-making heuristics and biases on the interpretation of health information for patients participating in health decisions.
Deborah Fels
Professor and Director of the Centre for Learning Technologies
Ryerson University
Deborah Fels is a Professor in the Ted Rogers School of Information Technology Management, and the Director of the Centre for Learning Technologies at Ryerson University.
Her research interests include access to multi-media computer applications for people with disabilities, inclusive media, web-based applications, entertainment and religious interfaces. She has been an assistant professor in Computer Science at the University of Guelph (1993-1995), and a researcher in the Microcomputer Applications Programme at Bloorview MacMillan Rehabilitation Centre (BMC)Before returning to complete her PhD, she was the Director of Biomedical Engineering (1987-1990) at Centenary Hospital in Scarborough. She is also a professional engineer.
Sam Trosow
Associate Professor, Faculty of Law / Faculty of Information and Media Studies
University of Western Ontario
Samuel Trosow is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario, jointly appointed to the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Information and Media Studies (FIMS). Sam’s research, which is at the intersection of Library and Information Science and Law, focuses on information policy issues. He is a frequent speaker on information law and policy issues and is the co-author of Canadian Copyright: A Citizen’s Guide (with Laura Murray, Between the Lines, 2007).
In the Law Faculty his teaching has included Intellectual Property, International Intellectual Property, Comparative Copyright, Copyright Theory Seminar, Information Law, Urban Law and the graduate seminar in legal theory. In FIMS he has taught Legal Issues for Information Professionals, International Documents, Information Policy, Legal Information Sources and Services, Political Economy of Information Seminar, and Perspectives in Library and Information Science.
Susan Zimmerman
Executive Director
Interagency Secretariat on Research Ethics, Tri-Council Initiative
Susan Zimmerman is the Executive Director of the Interagency Secretariat on Research Ethics, Tri-Council Initiative (CIHR,NSERC and SSHRC). Susan is a lawyer whose career has focused on health law and public policy.
Her professional experience includes positions as a senior research associate at the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University, Director of Legislation and Law Reform at the Canadian Bar Association, legal counsel at Health Canada and Director of Research for the Law Commission of Canada. Prior to her appointment to the Secretariat in September 2007, Susan was a member of the Health Law Group at the Toronto office of a national law firm, where she represented health care institutions and a variety of health care professionals. She has also been a university lecturer in health law and ethics and a member of research ethics boards.
A native of Montreal, Susan holds a B.A. From Bryn Mawr College, civil law and common law degrees from McGill University, and a Master of Laws from the University of Toronto.
International Session Speaker
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Marcelo Zuffo
Professor,
Polytechnic School, University of São Paulo
Marcelo Knorich Zuffo is full professor in the Electronics and Systems Department at the Polytechnic School in University of São Paulo - USP, Brazil. He is the director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Interactive Technologies at USP. He coordinates research and development in the field of Electronic Interactive Media, focusing on: digital health, security, high performance computing, virtual reality, computer graphics, and visualization. In 2001, he developed the first fully immersive virtual reality system in Brazil called Digital CAVE. He is a member of ACM-SIGGRAPH and IEEE. He is the scientific coordinator of the LEA, a national laboratory that has a key role in the National Public Key Infrastructure in Brazil. He has participated actively in the definition of the Brazilian Digital Television System and is member of the Brazilian DTV Forum since its establishment in 2007, where he is part of the Advisory Board and the Technical Module, coordinating the standards development related of security for digital TV. He was awarded the Personality Award in Technology Innovation by the Syndicate of Engineers of the State of São Paulo in 2006. He was awarded the Victory Medal by the Ministry of Defense in 2009.