WITI Oregon

Featured Speaker(s)

John Davis is a member of the Games User Research Group at Microsoft Game
Studios. John has worked in the user research field for about 8 years and has conducted user research with thousands of gamers, and summarized thousands of hours of gameplay. Before coming to the games user testing group, John was a Usability Engineer in the Social Computing Group (SCG) at Microsoft Research, where he conducted research to explore various social dimensions of computer-mediated communication and decision making. Before joining Microsoft, he was an assistant professor of psychology at Seattle University. John earned his B.S. in psychology from Texas A & M University (yes, he is an Aggie) and his Ph.D. in Experimental Social and Personality Psychology from the University of Washington.

Ralph Biesemeyer joined Intel in 2000 and the Digital Home Group in 2005. As Director of Content Services Development and Enabling, he runs a worldwide engineering and enabling team that serves content providers, digital publishers, music, video and game licensors, enabling services to digital home devices. Previous to joining Intel, Ralph was Director of Production Systems Planning & Engineering at NBC Network and held management positions at Panasonic Broadcast, Tektronix and Grass Valley Group. He is a member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

Sarah Marcus is the co-founder of Grow Film Company with fellow filmmaker Reed Harkness. Grow produces video projects for Wieden + Kennedy, Leopold Kettel, PICA and other Portland creative agencies. They are currently completing the feature length documentary "Sam Now!" which has recently received grant awards from the Pacific Pioneer Fund, Washington Council for the Humanities and RACC. Sarah is also an adjunct professor of film and video at Portland State University.

In addition to her professional activities, Sarah is also the director and co-director of several short films that have screened in film festivals worldwide and have received awards and recognition by Matt Groening, Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon.

Latthana "Ponzi" Indharasophang, who is of Thai descent, came to Lockergnome (www.lockergnmore.com) in April of 2004 from the mortgage industry, where she worked as a funding officer (and mobile notary), when she saw the promise of what the Internet could bring her personal and professional life. When she is not tracking attending to Lockergnome business, spiffing up her blog site (www.ponzarelli.com), pod-casting or planning conferences, including the upcoming Gnomedex�"an annual pow-wow for tech lovers and entrepreneurs�"she’s driving her convertible or eating strawberries in the bathtub. Ponzi says that she changes her hair color almost as often as her outfits, recently lost 100 lbs. and notes that her current favorite shoes are $10 flip-flops from Target. Lockergnome is an online web publishing company featuring writers for various “channels,” or topics including Windows fanatics, OSX, Technobabble, Web developers and more and also features coupons for discounts on everything from software to Tupperware™.

Our moderator is Marcia Hoover, the Director of Research and Strategic Planning at Young & Roehr Group, an integrated marketing communications agency in Portland serving the B2B market. In this role, she is responsible for developing the internal business strategy for the agency while also providing strategic counsel for YRG’s client base.

An accomplished corporate strategist and marketer for over 15 years, Ms. Hoover has broad experience in the technology industry, from networking applications and security systems to Web services and business process management. Prior to joining Young and Roehr, Ms. Hoover was a Director at Gartner, a technology research and consulting firm where she was responsible for building the market and business strategies for technology vendors in the Fortune 500. Ms. Hoover has also held senior level positions at Century Telephone and Pacific Telecom.

Ms. Hoover has two B.A.’s in Political Science and Communications from Washington State University, Edward R. Murrow School of Communications in Pullman, Washington.