Virtual Worlds Conference: Speakers and Panelists

Edward Anderson

        Edward Anderson is an Associate Professor of Operations Management at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business. He received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his bachelor’s degree with majors in history and electrical engineering from Stanford University. His research interests include outsourced product development (distributed innovation) and project management, the videogame industry, national security policy, knowledge management, supply chain management, and computer simulation. He has published articles in Management Science, Production and Operations Management, and The System Dynamics Review. Dr. Anderson won the prestigious Wickham Skinner Early-Career Research Award from the Production and Operations Management Society. He is a senior editor of Production and Operations Management and has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, SAP, and Hewlett-Packard. Professor Anderson has consulted with Ford, Shell, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Frito-Lay, and Atlantic-Richfield and holds three U.S. patents from his work at the Ford Motor Company.

Andrew Busey

        Andrew Busey is the founder and CEO of Challenge Games, a new online gaming company creating exciting and challenging short-form games that don’t require huge time commitments to play and enjoy. Over the past 15 years, Andrew has pioneered some of the industry’s most important web technologies - including work on Mosaic, the first web browser (now part of Microsoft Internet Explorer); creating iChat, one of the first instant messaging applications; and building WebCenter, the first major web-based customer service technology (now part of Avaya). He most recently co-founded Pluck which enables social media on major sites such as TheStreet.com, USA Today, and Reuters.

        But his passion has always been gaming. In 2006 Andrew decided the time was right to pursue his dream and Challenge Games was born. Challenge Games launched their first game Duels in August 2007. In the past, Andrew led, developed, and contributed to numerous "Multi-User Dungeon" or "Multi-User Domain" (MUDs) games, which were the early predecessors to games like World of Warcraft and Everquest. In 1994, he wrote Secrets of the MUD Wizards, the first major published book on the topic. Andrew holds seven technology patents and has several others pending. He is a graduate in computer science and marketing from Duke University and holds an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Edward Cavazos

        Edward Cavazos is a Principal in Fish & Richardson’s Austin office. His wide-ranging practice includes representing clients in general business and corporate transactions and in complex technology-related deals involving intellectual property. He routinely counsels his clients regarding general corporate, licensing, and labor and employment matters, as well as a variety of related issues. He has advised clients in the Internet, video game, and software industries among other areas. He also has experience in media and entertainment law. In addition to his broad transactional practice, he has extensive civil jury trial experience in both state and federal courts where he has litigated disputes involving trade secrets, copyright, trademarks, breach of contract and Internet-related claims.

        Mr. Cavazos is a nationally recognized authority on e-commerce and high-tech legal issues. Until 2000, he was Senior VP, General Counsel, and later Senior VP, Legal and Business Affairs, of Interliant, Inc., a pioneering Internet application service provider and Web hosting firm that went public in July of 1999. Mr. Cavazos also teaches "Software Licensing" at the University of Texas School of Law and "Digital Distribution" as part of the St. Edward’s University School of Management and Business MBA in Digital Media Management program.

        Fish & Richardson has one of the nation’s leading video game practices, and firm clients include, Ubisoft, Spark, Atari, Gesturetek, LucasArts, SnapTV, Tabula Digita, and Vollee. Mr. Cavazos has personally worked with such industry leaders as Take-Two Interactive, Challenge Games, Bluepoint Games and Major League Gaming.

Education
        University of Texas B.A. Philosophy 1990
        University of Texas School of Law J.D. 1993

Sharon Dunn

        A longtime Longhorn, Sharon received her B.Ed. in physical education from UT in December 1979 and her MBA in Finance in 1982. In her second year in the MBA program, Sharon drafted a plan for an unusual business, the Money Box. The idea for this enterprise was an outgrowth of a very successful check-cashing business in a family-owned grocery store. Working closely with her father and her two brothers, she opened the first store in April of 1981. More than twenty years later, the business has 67 stores located throughout the state of Texas.

        Sharon became fascinated with information systems when she saw how a low-tech business like the Money Box benefited from high-tech information sharing. Her interest in IT led her to PhD work in the IROM Information Systems Program. Sharon’s research extends beyond the impact of computers on the micro scale, looking at how computers have changed business interactions and consumer behavior.

        Sharon brings her enthusiasm for this kind of research into the classroom, wanting students to be able to "...articulate the impact of information sharing across networks and the trade-offs, costs, and benefits of alternative technologies."

        With a successful business career under her belt and a strong teaching and research career underway, Sharon Dunn is an excellent role model for aspiring business students because she has in fact "Dunn it all."

Rodney Gibbs

        Rodney is studio head of Fizz Factor, a video game development studio. Developing on handheld and console platforms, Fizz Factor specializes in prominent, mass-market, licensed titles, such as WWE Smackdown vs. Raw, The Incredible Hulk, SpongeBob and X-Men.

        After entering game development as a writer and producer, Rodney co-founded Fizz Factor in 2001 and has grown it from four to 50 employees. Prior to game development, Rodney wrote and produced animated and live-action television programs for such series as Godzilla, Beast Wars, Dead Man’s Gun, and Woody Woodpecker.

        Rodney chairs the Digital Media Council, a workforce development initiative focused on expanding the talent pool for all sectors of creative technology in Central Texas. He co-founded Austin’s chapter of Dorkbot, a forum for people doing strange things with electricity, and he serves on the boards of the International Game Developers of Austin, the Texas Motion Picture Alliance, and Skillpoint Alliance.

        He lives in Austin with his wife, Nancy Mims, a textile designer, and two children.

Blake Ives

        Blake Ives holds the C.T. Bauer Chair in Business Leadership at the Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston. He is also Director Director of Research for the Society for Information Management’s Advanced Practice Council.

        Blake is a Past President of the Association for Information Systems, a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems, and a past Editor-in-Chief of the MIS Quarterly. He currently serves as Senior Editor of MISQ Executive and is a member of several other editorial boards including Communications of the Association for Information Systems.

        Blake’s research has been published in Sloan Management Review, IBM Systems Journal, Management Information Systems Quarterly, MISQ Executive, Management Science, Information Systems Research, Communications of the ACM, Decision Sciences, Academy of Management Executive, DataBase, IEEE Computer, the Journal of MIS, and other peer outlets.

        In his other life, Blake is the well loved, but feared, Prince of ITWorld, an education and research principality on Second Life.

Leslie Jarmon

        Dr. Leslie Jarmon is a Faculty Development Specialist at the University of Texas at Austin with the Division for Instructional Innovation and Assessment. She has designed and taught graduate level courses since 1998 with the Office of Graduate Studies. Dr. Jarmon is perhaps best known for creating the world’s first multimedia digital dissertation to be accepted entirely on CD-ROM in 1996. She is a leader in the university’s entry into virtual world environments, specifically Second Life (SL), and she is co-founder of the Educators Coop, a virtual residential community of interdisciplinary educators, researchers, and librarians from around the world (http://www.educatorscoop.org). Leslie has published research papers and presented at numerous conferences on education and virtual worlds, including the American Sociological Association, the American Educational Research Association, and the New Media Consortium Symposium on Creativity. She served three years as outreach coordinator for UT’s Science, Technology & Society Program, and she was the coordinator and chief designer for the world’s first large-scale Civic Forum on the Societal Implications of Nanotechnology. Dr. Jarmon was instrumental in creating research partnerships between the University of Texas, the World Congress on Information Technology 2006 (WCIT), and leading private sector information technology companies.

Sirkka Jarvenpaa

        Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa is the James Bayless/Rauscher Pierce Refsnes Chair in Business Administration at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin where she is the director of the center for Business, Technology, and Law. For 2008-2012, she also holds Finnish Distinguished Professorship at the Helsinki University of Technology. She is the co-editor in chief of the Journal of Strategic Information Systems. She is the senior editor of Organization Science. She has served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Association for Information Systems and as the senior editor of Information Systems Research and MIS Quarterly. She is a frequent contributor in academic and industry forums on inter-organizational innovation, virtual teams, virtual organizations, and virtual communities.

Anne Lange

        Anne Lange came to Cisco after 10 years working in government and e-business alternatively.
        She started at the Prime Minister’s office, as the head of the department responsible for funding and managing state-owned broadcasting companies. Her job consisted in preparing governmental decisions applying to the broadcasting sector and favoring the development of the media & entertainment industry.
        She joined Thomson, a French high-tech champion, in 1998, as a strategic planning manager and built up a strategy for promoting a new generation of consumers electronics devices, including flat screens, wireless connections, access to the internet (mainly MP3 technologies). Shortly after, she created the new position of General Manager for e-business. She took part to Thomson strategic move towards internet-based services and launched Thomson web-sites for consumers communities.
        She then came back to the Prime Minister’s office and became General Secretary of the Internet Rights Forum, an agency working on the legislative & political changes brought by the development of the internet.
        Since she joined Cisco in 2004, Anne has been working as a trusted advisor to senior levels of large public sector organizations in Europe where transformation is imminent. In august 2008, she moved to Cisco headquarter in California to take a new role: she is in charge of IBSG Public sector operations worldwide and is also supporting Cisco internal Strategy related to Broadcast and media, a sector in the midst of deep transformations.
        Involved in disruptive projects, Anne contributes to build Cisco Vision on how Web 2.0 transforms Governments, big industries and contemporary Societies in depth.
        Anne is a graduate from ENA (National School of Administration, the French curriculum for high end civil servants). She is married and has three children.

Chi-Hyon Lee

        Dr. Chi-Hyon Lee is an Assistant Professor of Management at George Mason University School of Management. He received his doctorate from Boston University and his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of California, Irvine. His research interests include systems architecture, systems-based competition, graph analytics and metrics, and system dynamics. Specifically, Dr. Lee seeks to understand how packaged software companies create and sustain competitive advantage. He has published articles in the Academy of Management Journal and California Management Review. Professor Lee works with software research and service firms such as International Data Corporation (IDC). Prior to his academic work, he worked as an IBM System 370/390 systems programmer and systems analyst.

Rachel Maguire

        Rachel is a research director in the Health Horizons Program. Her research interests include migration and health, the global trade of health services, the global portability of health and pension benefits, and the international movement of health professionals. After joining IFTF, Rachel has applied trends in new media and mobile technologies to her health systems expertise to study how personal technologies are informing health care practices and delivering care. Much of her technology research has focused on mobile technologies and access to digital content in Latin America. She has directed fieldwork and quantitative and qualitative research in Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.
        Rachel has written on standardizing education and training for international health professionals, the role of telehealth in facilitating service delivery across borders in the European Union, the increasing opportunities for Mexican health professionals to work in the United States, and service delivery schemes and financing for U.S. citizens living in Mexico.
        She has a BA in politics and international studies from Oberlin College and an MPAff from the University of Texas at Austin.

Douglas Morrice

        Dr. Morrice is Professor and Chair of the Information, Risk, and Operations Management Department at The University of Texas at Austin. He holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University. He received a Bachelors degree in Operations Research from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Doug Morrice has extensive consulting, teaching, and research experience in the areas of Management Science and Supply Chain Management. Currently, he is involved in a multi-year teaching and research project with Price Waterhouse Coopers in the area of Supply Chain Management. Over the last three years, Dr. Morrice has worked with Schlumberger analyzing and improving their operations and logistics using optimization and simulation techniques. His current research interests focus on optimization and risk management in the supply chain. At The University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Morrice teaches Supply Chain Management, Managment Science, and Operations Simulation. During July 1998, he also served as the director of the Texas Institute for Latin American Research Program in Information Technology and Decision Support Systems which gathered professors from the Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Brazil, the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administracion, Venezuela, and The University of Texas at Austin.

David Neff

        David J. Neff is the Director of Web, Film and Interactive Strategies for the American Cancer Society's High Plains Division. In this capacity he directs all Web and Interactive strategies and online properties for 6 states. His department also manages the Division's eRevenue strategy, Social Networking/Media strategy, Online Community strategy and all online propertiesfor the High Plains Division. He is also a past twice recipient of a Futuring and Innovations grant, which he used to create C-Tools and SharingHope.TV. C-Tools was the first PDA software tool for the prevention of cancer ever developed by the American Cancer Society. While SharingHope.TV is the non-profit world's first ever totally user-generated content Web Site. David is also responsible for helping start The Frozen Pea Fund to fight Breast Cancer and a co-founder of the successful Austin Tweetups : Social Media for Social Good. He also does Freelance New Media Marketing for several clients in Austin, TX and around Texas and is accepting new clients.

        He earned his BS in Public Relations from the University of Texas in 2000 with a minor in Business from the McCombs Shchool of Business. He earned his Certified Internet Webmaster certification in 2003. He currently lives in Austin, TX and enjoys freelancing, filmmaking, live music, photography, spending time with his dog and friends.

Elota Patton

        Elota Patton has been a lecturer in the McCombs School of Business since 1994. She has taught Introduction to Information Systems Management, Business Communication, Emerging Technologies, and Advanced e-Business Topics. Her areas of interest include systems thinking, organizational behavior, business process improvement, and the role that communication plays in all of these. In the area of academic service, she created and managed the annual BizIT case competition from 2003-2008 with the support of an amazing team of professional industry and student volunteers. In 2008-09, she created and managed the McCombs Next Top Major competition, where undergraduates at The University of Texas competed to create the best video to market one of the McCombs School undergraduate majors. Elota’s teaching has been recognized by a number of awards, including the Texas Excellence Teaching Award, the McCombs BBA Faculty Honor Roll, and the UT Senate of College Councils Professor of the Month. Prior to coming McCombs, Elota worked for 15 years as a theatre manager and producer. She is also a Licensed Professional Counselor and professional communication consultant.

Joe Sanchez

        Joe Sanchez is a doctoral candidate in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on collaboration in social virtual worlds and the interplay between digital-media, play, and learning. His course Working in Virtual Worlds has been covered in national media outlets including The Chronicle of Higher Education, USA TODAY, and ABC News. Joe Sanchez has been teaching in Second Life since the Fall of 2006 and was recently awarded the first Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Academic Service Entrepreneur grant for Service learning in a virtual world.

Keri Stephens

        Keri K. Stephens is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at UT Austin. Her research examines how people use information and communication technologies (ICTs) at work. She focuses specifically on combinatorial ICT use by studying ICT use sequences, simultaneous and multi-tasking ICT use, and the consequences of working in organizations containing a multitude of ICT options. Her published and forthcoming work appears in Communication Theory, Management Communication Quarterly, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Communication Education, Journal of Business Communication, Journal of Health Communication, Informing Science, and Case Studies in Organizational Communication. She is a co-author of the book Information and Communication Technology in Action: Linking Theory and Narratives of Practice. Prior to academia, Dr. Stephens spent eight years in industry working in technical sales, corporate training, and project management roles.

Sharon Strover

        Dr. Strover is the Philip G. Warner Regents Professor in Communication and Chair of the Radio-TV-Film Department at the University of Texas, where she teaches communications and telecommunications courses and directs the Telecommunications and Information Policy Institute. Some of her current research projects examine statewide networks and advanced broadband services; the relationship between economic outcomes and investments in digital media programs in higher education in Portugal; social media; the digital divide; rural broadband deployment; e-government; telecommunications infrastructure deployment and economic development in rural regions; and market structure and policy issues for international audio-visual industries.

        Dr. Strover has worked with the with several national and regional government agencies on telecommunications policy matters (U.S. Federal Communication Commission, The Appalachian Regional Commission, the Office of Technology Assessment, the Rural Policy Institute, the Ford Foundation, the European Union, the Texas Public Utility Commission, the Department of Information Resources and Department of Health and Human Services, the US Department of Agriculture and the Aspen Institute), and has published several articles and chapters on subjects related to technology and telecommunications. She is editor or co-editor of three books, edited journal issues for The Information Society and Government Information Quarterly, and is on the editorial boards of several major publications. She is currently working on a book addressing economic development and the spatial distribution of telecommunications resources. She has served as Mass Communication Division Chair and the Law and Policy Division Chair for the International Communication Association and is active with several professional associations within the field.

        Dr. Strover received her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her graduate degrees from Stanford University.

Huseyin Tanriverdi

        Hüseyin Tanriverdi is an associate professor of information, risk, and operations management at Red McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his doctorate from Boston University. Dr. Tanriverdi has a research and teaching program that examines how organizations innovate, grow, and achieve and sustain superior financial performance. He focuses on complementary IT and business capabilities that enable firms to achieve superior financial performance in corporate diversification moves; mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures; outsourcing and off shoring initiatives; and adoption and deployment of complex IT innovations. He examines IT governance practices that reduce corporate risks, increase corporate returns, and lead to superior risk-return positions for corporations. Dr. Tanriverdi teaches courses on strategic IT management, IT governance for enterprise risk management and regulatory compliance, and management of emerging information technologies. Dr. Tanriverdi publishes his research in top information systems journals such as Information Systems Research and MIS Quarterly, and top management journals such as Academy of Management Journal and Strategic Management Journal.

Robin Teigland

        Robin is an Associate Professor at the Center for Strategy and Competitiveness (www.hhs.se/csc) at the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden. For more than ten years, she has researched and lectured on social networks and their relationship with strategy and performance. More recently she has turned her attention to virtual worlds, and her avatar, Karinda Rhode, is the caretaker of the Stockholm School of Economics island in Second Life (SSE MBA). In addition to her research on emergent organizations in virtual worlds, she also runs several inworld training activities focused on improving virtual teaming skills together with Steve Mahaley at Duke CE. Robin is also a guest editor of the forthcoming special issue on virtual worlds for MIS Quarterly.

        Prior to completing her doctoral thesis on knowledge networking at the Institute of International Business at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), she worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company in Stockholm. Additionally, she holds a B.A. in Economics with distinction from Stanford University, an M.B.A. from The Wharton School, and an M.A. in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.

Laura Thomas

        Laura Pevehouse Thomas has worked in and around the Dell family for more than eight years, primarily in the areas of corporate communications, employee communications, public relations, community affairs, branding and online communication.

        She is currently part of the Global Online group where she provides strategic direction and internal consulting that integrates online and social media opportunities with a focus on Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. She assisted with the creation of Direct2Dell, and brought web feeds and podcasts to Dell.com. In her spare time she led Dell into the metaverse with the creation of Dell Island in Second Life.

        Laura has earned the designation of Accredited Business Communicator from the International Association of Business Communicators, and received her News/Editorial Journalism degree from Louisiana State University. Before joining Dell Financial Services in 2000, she worked at the Texas Workforce Commission and PepsiCo Food Systems Worldwide. She has been a resident of Second Life since June 2006.