Dr. Preston is the coordinator for the Center of Applied Gaming and Media Arts (CAGMA) and coordinator of the Computer Game Design and Development degree and Associate Professor, School of Computing and Software Engineering at Southern Polytechnic State University. He has authored over 40 papers in conferences and journals regarding Computer Science, Information Technology, and games-related learning. He is particularly interested in game simulation, social space development and the use of these technologies to improve learning. Dr. Preston has been teaching computing for 13 years and has taught game development courses over the past six years, including a mobile and casual game development class in which students develop games for Android and the iPhone/iPad platforms. He led the development of the Bachelors of Science in Computer Game Design and Development degree at SPSU and was also the founder of the Center for Applied Gaming and Media Arts at SPSU. In the past three years, Dr. Preston has hosted five game jam weekends (three of which were part of the Global Game Jam) totaling over 40 games developed by more than 200 participants. Dr. Preston also serves on the Academic Committee of the Georgia Game Developers Association and was the College Fair Coordinator for the 2010 Southeastern Interactive Entertainment and Games Expo. He also participates on the Entertainment Engineering Subcommittee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Dr. Preston’s industry experience includes system development for a mobile platform and media company. He has participated in games-for-learning and community building grants to enhance STEM education and was recently awarded an NSF grant entitled “Using a Virtual Gaming Environment in

Strength of Materials: Increasing Access and Improving Learning Effectiveness” that develops 3D simulations/games to improve learning among engineering students. Additionally, he has spoken at three recent NSF-sponsored workshops on gaming in engineering and computer science education and how to vertically integrate student teams in games for learning projects.

You can find more information at his web site at http://cse.spsu.edu/jpreston

GEM Initiative from Atlanta Regional Commission on Vimeo.

Developer & Designer Tools:

1) Unity 3D
2) JQuery Mobile
3) Sencha
4) Ansca
5) Click Team
6) Cacoo
7) Windows Mobile Dev Tools

Useful Data Sources & API’s:

1) Socrata Data Services
2) Open Gov Data Sets
3) Simple GEO
4) Factual
5) PayPal API
6) Tropo API
7) Phono API (Use JQuery to send message and make calls)

Here is what you should consider bringing with you:

Positive Attitude and Team Spirit
Extension Cords and Surge Protectors
Head Phones or Headset
Whiteboard Markers
Sticky Notes
Sketch Books and Pencils
Sharpie Markers
Toothbrush (if you plan to work on site all 3 days)
Sleeping bag (in case you want to crash for a few hours)

Jonathan Gosier is a designer, software developer, and serial entrepreneur. He currently serves as Director of Product for SwiftRiver at Ushahidi building a platform for making sense of streams of realtime data. SwiftRiver’s mission is to democratize access to the tools used for drawing insight from data feeds that would otherwise be overwhelming. The platform accomplishes this using natural language processing, location disambiguation techniques, statistical analysis, and the open graph.

He’s also the founder of Appfrica and HiveColab a business accelerator and incubator for East African technologists. Appfrica was founded in 2008 and the goal is to build local capacity for young technologist in the region. Appfrica is an active mentoring group and investor for software developers in Africa and works with a number of multinational firms who wish to do work in the continent. He’s also served as an investor for many African startups including the Kuyu Project and Status.ug, a now defuct UGandan mobile-social network.

Jon Gosier has been a frequent speaker at the TED Conference, is a TED Senior Fellow, and TEDxOrganizer. In 2009 Jon spoke at TEDGlobal in Oxford about his company Appfrica and one of their projects which connected rural African villages with the internet. The service, in collaboration with nonprofit OpenMind, was called QuestionBox and allowed people with no access to the internet to ask questions and get timely, vetted answers.

Prior to working as a software developer, Jon worked in the Film and Music industries for a number of big name artists and directors including Andre Benjamin, Tyler Perry and The Neptunes. He attended Savannah College of Art and Design and the University of Georgia.

Jon Gosier’s work has been profiled by a number of media outlets including the NewYorkTimes, Forbes, The Guardian and New Scientist. Those articles an more can be found here http://gosdot.com/Press

Jeff Sawyer is Vice President of Mobile & Connected Device Solutions, responsible for deploying technology infrastructure and engineering resources in support of Turner’s mobile initiatives globally.

Named to this position in November 2010, Jeff is based in Turner’s world headquarters in Atlanta and reports to Brooks Tobey, SVP, Sales Solutions & Multi-Screen Development & Delivery.

Before joining Turner, Jeff worked at RealNetworks, where he led their platform engineering group. Prior to joining RealNetworks, Jeff helped launch MVNO Helio as VP of MIS, served as director of wireless operations at EarthLink and held other engineering and consulting roles in telecommunications and technology companies.

Jeff received his MBA from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University and holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Kansas State University.

Jesse Lindsley is the Founder and CEO of Thrust Interactive, an end-to-end game development studio in Atlanta, GA designing 2D and 3D web and mobile games. Thrust specializes in single-player and massive multi-player games in the advergaming, social and educational game genres. As an active member of his industry, Jesse sits on the board of International Game Developers Association -Atlanta, Digitainment and Indie Developers Guild as well as organizes both the Atlanta Game Developer and Unity 3D Meetups. To check out Thrust’s latest games and their reality TV debut, go to thrustinteractive.com.

Thrust Interactive
@thrustinteractv
www.thrustinteractive.com

Stephen is a 13 year industry veteran who draws upon significant experience as a Software Engineer, Art Director, Teacher, and Game Designer to lead Eyes Wide Games. Over the last decade, Stephen has professionally contributed to video games of all shapes and sizes (skill games, adver-games, kid’s games, educational games, experimental games, mobile games) and brings this experience along with a passion for play to bear on charting new courses for social games.

http://www.eyeswidegames.com/

Follow him on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/_stephengriffin