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Meeting Location:
Northeastern University
Room 440, Egan Research Center
120 Forsyth Street, Boston MA 02115Meeting Time: 6:30 - 9:30 pm
Meeting Cost:
Parking Information for this meeting:
THIS MEETING IF FREE, THERE WILL BE NO CHARGE TO ATTEND, however, pre-registration is preferred! Register Online
Renaissance Park Garage
835 Columbus Avenue
Roxbury Crossing, MA 02120Map of parking facility and meeting location.
Map of Northeastern University Campus
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The Youth Movement - Digital Media's Leaders and Their Ideas
THIS MEETING IS FREE, THERE WILL BE NO CHARGE TO ATTEND, however, pre-registration is preferred! Register Online
Please note the location of this meeting is at:
Northeastern University -
Room 440
Egan Research Center
120 Forsyth Street, Boston MA 02115Map and Parking Information provided in the right column >
Meeting Overview
A panel of the region's young, dynamic digital media company founders and CEOs will discuss a wide range of topics relating to their personal careers, their experiences running their companies, where they get their best ideas, and the future of the digital media industry in Boston. The panelists are backed by some of the leading firms in the venture capital industry and are all on aggressive growth paths.
The panel will be moderated by Professor Terrence Masson, a member of the faculty at Northeastern University.
The panelists will discuss:
Their personal career path to their leadership position and their thoughts on preparing young people to follow in their footsteps.
The hot new digital media trends and business models and how they keep their companies innovative and competitive.
How they convinced venture capitalists and angels to back their companies.
The role universities do or should play as a source of talented employees and new ideas.
How to make Boston a world-class center for digital media companies.
The panel will be moderated by Professor Terrence Masson, a member of the faculty of Northeastern University.
Moderator:
Terrance Masson, Director of Game Design: Northeastern University Author of "CG101: A Computer Graphics Industry Reference" (2007 Second Edition) www.cg101.com
I have 20 years of production experience, since 1994 running my own consulting company "Digital Fauxtography" as a Creative Producer, Director and VFX Supervisor. I've come up through the ranks on about 20 feature films as well as many commercials and video game projects including three Star Wars movies and getting SouthPark started. I am a member of the Producers Guild of America, the Visual Effects Society and have been active in SIGGRAPH since 1988, most recently as the 2006 Computer Animation Festival Chair and currently as SIGGRAPH 2010 Conference Chair. www.visualfx.com
Panelists:
Evan Schumacher, CEO, Going.com
Evan Schumacher is a three-time CEO of venture backed companies. Currently CEO of Going.com, The premier community for 20-somethings looking for what to do in their city and connecting with others who like to do the same thing. Going is backed by Highland Capital and General Catalyst Partners.
Prior to Going.com, Evan was CEO of Everypoint, a platform for creating and delivering real-time mobile applications. Evan led Everypoint from inception through two rounds of venture funding, securing of initial customers such as Yahoo, o2, IMG/TWI and Bertelsmann and building relationships with carriers, operators and handset manufacturers across USA and Europe. He guided the company from a three person founding team to a 30 person organization with operations in USA and Europe and oversaw the commercialization of the core technology.
Prior to Everypoint, Evan was the Founder and CEO of Celarix, a venture-backed company that was the world's first managed service for the logistics industry serving dozens of Fortune 500 customers in the retail and high tech areas. Celarix was sold to Global Exchange Services in 2003.
Evan has a B.A. degree from Northeastern University, and an M.B.A from the Kellogg School of Management.
Karen Ong, CEO and Founder, MyHappyPlanet.com
Karen is a language and travel enthusiast. She speaks five languages and has traveled to over 100 cities in 6 continents. This passion for languages and different cultures led Karen to start MyHappyPlanet.com - a social media site for language learning and cultural exchange.
Through the site, Karen hopes to bridge cultures across the globe and to make the world a much smaller place. After launching MyHappyPlanet.com a few months ago, over 300,000 language learners from 212 countries are now teaching and learning from each other on the site.
MyHappyPlanet.com is a continuation of Karen's interest in building global businesses. Prior to MyHappyPlanet.com, Karen led the turnaround of Olay's skin care and Clairol's hair care business in Southeast Asia, Australasia, and India. She also worked in a family business, responsible for sales and product outsourcing in China.
Karen holds an MBA degree from the Harvard Business School where she received the prestigious Robert F. Jasse Award honoring the student with the most outstanding entrepreneurship and leading skills.
Brian Balfour is a serial internet entrepreneur and active member of the Boston tech community.Brian is currently founder of his fourth startup, Viximo, a company focused on the emerging virtual goods industry. Viximo is funded by North Bridge Venture Partners and Sigma Partners. Brian was also a founding member of Betahouse, a co-working space for tech entrepreneurs located in Cambridge. Brian specializes in online communities and blogs at www.SocialDegree.com.
Matt Lauzon, Co-Founder and CEO, Paragon Lake
Matt Lauzon founded Paragon Lake in 2006 as a student at Babson College. Lauzon enrolled at Babson because of its reputation as the number one school in the world for entrepreneurship education and leveraged all the college had to offer while exploring various business opportunities. Paragon Lake was born when Lauzon and a fellow student uncovered a niche in the jewelry industry at the intersection of e-commerce and mass customization. Serving as co-founder and CEO, Lauzon took Paragon Lake from an idea incubating in a Babson dormitory to become an institutionally funded company in just two years.
Lauzon created a leadership team that includes industry veterans from both the software and jewelry spaces and built a national network of independent jewelers that use Paragon Lakes' proprietary platform to drive made-to-order sales in their stores. In addition to building the team and driving growth, Lauzon led the company through two rounds of institutional funding totaling over $6M in financing from Highland Capital Partners and Canaan Partners.
Lauzon earned a B.S. in Business Management from Babson College where he was an Arthur M. Blank Scholar. At Babson, he was named one of "America's Top Entrepreneurs Under the Age of 25" by BusinessWeek, was the winner of the John H. Muller Jr. Business Plan Competition, and was awarded the Shelby Cullom Davis prize for social entrepreneurship.
Brian Shin, Founder/CEO, Visible Measures
Brian Shin is the founder and CEO of Visible Measures, the independent third-party measurement firm for Internet video publishers and advertisers. Brian has co-founded several successful Internet software companies, including web-based collaboration technology vendor Creative Aspects, which was acquired by Medsite Inc. (now WebMD); and The Cambridge Intelligence Agency, a web-based email response management solution provider that was acquired by marketing services company MSGi. Brian also co-founded technology strategy consulting firm Infraweb, Inc. where he served as President, and was an early member of the team at Allaire Corp. which went public in 1999 and was subsequently acquired by Macromedia.
Brian enjoys trying new foods with his wife, holds an undergraduate degree from Tufts University, and earned an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management as part of the dual-degree Harvard-MIT Biomedical Enterprise Program.
