Gareth Edmondson

Studio Manager, Ubisoft

Gareth has worked in the video games industry for over 10 years working as a producer, a production manger and for the past 4 years has run Ubisoft's Reflections studio in Newcastle, UK. Prior to working in the video games industry, Gareth worked in civil engineering in the mobile phone industry.

Reflections Interactive, established 24 years ago, is one of the oldest names in video game development. Reflection's heritage stretches back as far as the BBC micro and Commodore Amiga days creating classic brands such as 'The Shadow of the Beast'. For the last 13 years, the studio has specialised in driving games and has most notably created the 'Driver', 'Stuntman' and 'Destruction Derby' series.

The studio was purchased by Ubisoft in 2006 and is Ubisoft's only UK based development studio.

Steve Walmsley

Managing Director of Mere Mortals

Steve is the Managing Director of Mere Mortals an award winning multi platform media business covering Video Games, TV and Film post production, Special Effects and Web.

Steve joined Mere Mortals in 2006 with a brief to ‘converge’ three totally independent businesses and create a company which could meet the needs of a rapidly changing market place. Mere Mortals has more than doubled its revenues over the last couple of years and retained its profitability by broadening the appeal of its products and services beyond its traditional client base.

After a successful career in broadcast TV Steve moved into management after completing his MBA and has successfully run a number of organizations both private and public sector all connected in some way to screen and software development, he jumped at the opportunity to join Mere Mortals, bringing together his love of screen based entertainment and communications and the challenge of the changing business environment.

Robert Bond

Speechly Bircham

With nearly 30 years’ experience of acting for developers and publishers, Robert Bond has been described as “the grandfather of legal expertise” for the computer games industry.

Robert has at one time or another acted for most of the major publishers including Electronic Arts, Domark, Eidos, Ubisoft, GrandSlam, Bright Things, Focus Multimedia and Elite Systems. During his career he has negotiated for developers on the other side of Electronic Arts, Eidos, Namco, Activision, Take Two, Sony, Ocean Software, Infogrammes, 3DO, Sega and Nintendo.

Over the years he has acted for numerous developers including Core Design, Out of the Park Developments, Simis, Maxis, Merit Studios, Eutechnyx, Razorback, Crawfish and he is currently working for a number of games companies including the Second Life phenomenon, Zoe Mode and two Web 2.0 businesses to be launched in 2008.

Robert has been deeply involved with the industry having been the external lawyer to the European Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) at its creation, advising ELSPA on the legal issues relating to the games rating chart and the age rating programme. He has been a regular speaker at games events over the years including ELSPA conferences and E3.

Under Robert’s leadership Speechly Bircham has developed a dedicated team to the computer games sector with a first rate practice in this field. Alex Carter-Silk, Mark Bailey, Nicholas Tall, James Castro-Edwards, Michelle Lewiston, Marcus Hughes, Samantha King and Claire McInnes all act for clients in the computer games sector.

Ed Vaizey MP

Shadow Minister for Culture

Ed Vaizey MP was elected as the Member of Parliament for Wantage and Didcot in May 2005. Since November 2006, he has been the Conservatives’ Shadow Minister for Culture, looking after arts and broadcasting policy.

Born in 1968, Ed attended Merton College, Oxford. When he left university, he spent two years working for the Conservative Party’s Research Department, before training and practising as a barrister.

In 1996, he left the law, and became the director of a highly successful public relations company based in London. In 2004, he left to become the chief speech writer for the then Leader of the Opposition, Michael Howard.

Ed also built up a career as a freelance political commentator, writing regularly for The Guardian, and appearing on programmes such as Despatch Box and The Wright Stuff, as well as broadcasting frequently on Five Live.

Ian Baverstock

Ian Baverstock

Ian studied Aeronautical Engineering and initially worked in an aerospace software research team before founding his first company, Simis, in 1989. Ian has subsequently led various businesses at the intersection of technology and entertainment.

Ian sold Simis to Eidos in 1995, then co-led an MBO and subsequent floatation of its successor Kuju. Ian has grown Kuju into one of the world's largest independent game developers with multiple studios in the UK, Europe, the US and Asia. Kuju is now part of the German-listed media services group Catalis.

Ian is a Chartered Engineer and was also Chairman of TIGA, the UK trade body for game development businesses, for 4 years until early 2009.

Rick Gibson

Director of Games Investor Consulting

Rick is a Director of Games Investor Consulting, a specialist games industry consultancy founded in 2003 to provide independent games research, management consultancy and corporate finance consulting to the games, media and finance industries.

GIC is one of the industry's most trusted sources for market intelligence, and has generated a number of industry-standard reports for Screen Digest. GIC has worked on games research and strategy for numerous games and media companies as well as trade and governmental bodies, including TIGA, UKTI, BERR, ITI Techmedia, RTL and the BBC.

In 2007, Rick completed a major piece of research into the UK games industry's competitiveness, Playing for Keeps, which investigated the impact of globalisation on the UK games industry, profiled governmental support in competitor territories such as Canada, and conducted the most detailed analysis yet of the UK games development community.

Rick has also researched outsourcing in games development and online gaming. GIC has increasingly been working with broadcasters interested in the games industry. Rick is also a director of UK games developer AirPlay.

Mark Morris

Managing director, Introversion Software

Mark Morris joined forces with Chris Delay and Thomas Arundel to found Introversion Software in 2001 after completing a Masters degree in Computer Science at Imperial College, London.

Mark has used the experiences and management skills he gained from a period of work with the Ministry of Defence to ensure the smooth day-to-day running and operation of Introversion, in which he adopts the role of both project manager and arbiter between the commercial and development sides of the team.

To date, Mark has been heavily involved in the successful online and retail launches of Introversion’s titles, Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON and Multiwinia. He is currently working in the role of producer for Introversion’s next title Darwinia+ (Xbox Live Arcade) due out towards the end of 2009.

Simon Seefeldt

Head of business development, Jagex

Simon joined Jagex in the summer of 2004 and currently serves as its head of business development, responsible for commercial partnerships, marketing and promotions.

Before his appointment to the role in May 2007, Simon pioneered Jagex’s international development as localisation manager, formulating the firm's localisation strategy and overseeing the translation of its products into multiple languages.

Charles Cecil

Founder & managing director, Revolution Software

Charles Cecil has been a key figure in the interactive entertainment industry for 25 years. He is currently the managing director of York-based studio Revolution Software, which has released such critical and commercial hits as Beneath a Steel Sky and the Broken Sword series – the most successful console-based adventure franchise of all time.

Charles is on the advisory panel of the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival and the Develop Conference, and regularly talks at events and to mainstream press about creative and commercial aspects of the video games industry. He is also a co-founded and remains a Director of Game Republic, an alliance of game developers, and is a Board member of Screen Yorkshire, a regional agency that supports film, television and interactive entertainment in Yorkshire. In 2006 Charles was awarded the status of ‘industry legend’ by Develop, Europe’s leading development magazine.

Paul Farley

Managing director, Tag Games

Having earned his games industry stripes with a number of key game design positions on high profile console, PC and mobile games, Paul was the leading founder of Tag Games in 2006 and now operates in the multi-faceted role of managing director.

Beginning his career at legendary Scottish studio DMA Design, Paul played a key role in the development the Grand Theft Auto series, one of the world’s most successful games franchises, before later leading the design of another worldwide hit, State of Emergency, at Vis Entertainment.

Prior to founding Tag Games he spent five years as head of design at mobile games publisher I-play working with both original IP and some of the largest intellectual properties on the planet.

At the forefront of the mobile games industry from its early beginnings on WAP and SMS platforms, Paul has a wealth of knowledge and understanding of this hugely exciting and rapidly growth market.