Speakers
Brian Whitman, Ph.D. (Co-Founder & CTO of the Echo Nest)
Brian Whitman (The Echo Nest) teaches computers how to make, listen to, and read about music. He received his doctorate from the Machine Listening group at MIT’s Media Lab in 2005 and his masters in Computer Science from Columbia University’s Natural Language Processing group in 2000. His research links automatically extracted community knowledge of music to its acoustic properties to “learn the meaning of music.” His composition and sound art projects consider the effects of machine interpretation of large amounts of media, such as the first actual “computer music” (as in music for computers) of “Eigenradio.” As the co-founder and CTO of the Echo Nest Corporation, Brian architects an open platform with billions of data points about the world of music: from the listeners to the musicians to the sounds within the songs.
http://the.echonest.com/company/management/
http://twitter.com/bwhitman
Shamal Ranasinghe (Co-Founder of TopSpin)
Shamal Ranasinghe is a co-founder of Topspin Media. Before starting Topspin in 2007 with co-founder Peter Gotcher, Shamal was involved in data mining efforts at Yahoo! Music and headed up product management at Musicmatch releasing versions 8 through 10. Topspin is a technology platform for artists to create their own retail channels, promote their products throughout the web, and connect directly with their fans. Since coming out of stealth mode in June 2008, a number of artists have chosen the Topspin platform to market music directly to their fans, including Paul McCartney, Beastie Boys, David Byrne & Brian Eno, Arcade Fire, Eminem, Linkin Park, Metric, and Fanfarlo.
http://www.topspinmedia.com/shamal-ranasinghe/
http://twitter.com/shamalman
Dave Haynes (VP of business development at SoundCloud)
Dave Haynes is VP Business Development for SoundCloud, a cloud- based music platform that allows music creators and professionals to easily distribute, share and stream audio over the web. With over a decade’s experience in the music industry, Dave currently works at the forefront of the latest trends in digital music. As well as his work for SoundCloud, he is the organiser of the OpenMusicMedia and Music Hack Day events that take place across the world. This year he was listed as one of UK’s Young Music Entrepreneurs 2010 and is also a frequent speaker at various events from TEDxCardiff to SXSW in Austin.
http://davehaynes.me/about/
http://twitter.com/haynes_dave
Minivegas (Luc Schurgers and Daniel Lewis)
Combining the directing experience of Luc Schurgers and the programming know-how of Daniel Lewis, Minivegas offers a focus on film and cross-platform projects with a track record of innovation in this area.
Directing both animation and live action, Luc and Dan constantly push creative boundaries, using their broad spectrum of artistic and technical expertise to create work that conveys ideas through many different types of media and technology. Their pioneering work, such as their voice- responsive idents for S4C, is earning them worldwide accolades, with wins at the Cannes Lions, the CADs and the D&AD. Alongside their film and interactive work, Minivegas also run Vegas Gallery (www.vegasgallery.co.uk).
With a strong reel in traditional commercial work for major brands (including Levis, GQ, Star Wars, Red Bull, Ray-Ban and Nissan), Minivegas recently directed a CG and live-action campaign for the release of the new Super Mario video game. They also created the incredible Visualizer project – a virtual gallery that creates art in real time in response to music and gestures.
More info at www.minivegas.co.uk
Erwin Blom (The Crowds)
Erwin Blom is a music and mediafreak who started his carreer at musicmagazine Vinyl. After that he started making radio for the VPRO, amongst others he did shows like La Stampa, Koud Zweet en De Voorste Linie. With a passion for innovation and technology, he was the head of new media at the VPRO for almost a decade. He stood at the cradle of the music platform 3voor12. After he left in 2009, he started the Crowds, a company specialized in media and innovation with a focus on social media.
Filip Visnjic (www.creativeapplications.net)
Filip is an architect, lecturer, writer and a new media technologist based in London. Specialised in consulting and directing web, new media and architectural projects, Filip also contributes to a number of blogs and magazines about art, design and technology. He is an editor at CreativeApplications.Net, a director at Working Architecture Group and lectures at a number of universities in the UK.
