Seth Shapiro is a two-time Emmy® Award winner and a leader in the profitable application of new technology to emerging business models.  He has managed digital initiatives with the Walt Disney Company, Comcast, NBC Universal, Time Warner, Viacom, DIRECTV, TiVo, HBO, Sun Microsystems, Goldman Sachs and a variety of startup, venture and private equity partners. 

Shapiro is Principal of advisory firm New Amsterdam Media LLC, a partner in Media Valuation Partners, and a partner at the Opportunity Management Company.  He is also a Founder of ARC: The A&R Channel, a VOD network available in 17,000,000 US cable homes via Comcast.
As Head of Production at DIRECTV’s Advanced Services Group, Shapiro managed over 20 service launches across four platforms, designed the revolutionary NFL? Sunday Ticket® Highlights On Demand Service, and was Production Lead for DIRECTV/TiVo.

Shapiro is a member of OVP Venture Partners' Technology Advisory Group, the Television Academy's Blue Ribbon Emmy Committee, the PICNIC Amsterdam Advisory Board, the American Film Institute’s Digital Content Lab, the IP Media Expo Advisory Board, the Producer's Guild New Media Council and the Milken Institute. He is a magna cum laude graduate of New York University and was Adelbert Alumni Scholar at CWRU and the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Matt Welton is the VP of Creative Development in the US for never.no, which has been powering interactive TV formats in Europe for over 10 years.  Welton, who has more than 18 years' experience in interactive and linear media, started as Manager of Production and Development for game publisher Viacom New Media, then moved on to be VP of Development for early online game developer, Bottle Rocket. In 2000 he began eight years of tenure as Executive Producer and Executive in Charge of Production for Noggin and The N networks, part of the Nickelodeon Kids and Family television group.  While there he developed several early convergent TV properties including The Hub Bub, a chat-to-broadcast application in 2001, a play along fantasy baseball companion to the reality show On The Team, and Sponk Online, a national online improv comedy competition based on the Sponk TV series.  He led the N.com and Noggin.com websites from 2000-2005, winning the People's Choice Webby Award in 2004.  Matt also executive produced Noggin's educational television series Oobi, Miffy and Connie the Cow, developed The N's Beyond the Break and was the EIC for the The N's Student Body and South of Nowhere which was nominated three times by GLAAD for Best Dramatice TV series, once for a Fox Teen Choice nominee and  once for a WGA award.

Ian Valentine is a well-known industry visionary who has been working in Digital Media and connected TV for the last 12 years.

In 2000, Ian co-founded an internet based Interactive TV company, which developed the first XML based, internet micro-browser for the OpenTV environment. The company was bought by Sky, and Ian led this initiative for Sky, which transformed their Interactive Division to become the market leader in the UK iTV market. As Technical Alliances Director and Interactive R&D Board member at Sky, Ian launched “SkyNet” – the first truly open ’Apps Store’ model for Interactive TV services, and has published two ETSI Technical Standards for XML based online services. The wTVML standard was later recommended by the ITU for international use.

Ian is currently Founder and Chief Architect of Miniweb, a spin-off from Sky, providing a Connected TV services platform enabling easy navigation and consumption of internet video on TV devices. The full service platform incorporates search, recommendations, personalisation, community features, payments and advertising.

With Miniweb, Ian has won a number of awards including: Red Herring Europe 100 Winner 2008; Pick Hit Award for Innovation at IBC 2008; Best Interactive Service/Application, IPTV World Series Award 2009; TVB Europe Editors’ Award Best of IBC 2009.

For more than three decades, Dewey Reid has been a visionary force at the forefront of digital communications and broadband-based entertainment industries.

Over the course of his career, Mr. Reid has played a broad range of creative and leadership roles for an impressive list of leading communications and technology companies.

He has extensive experience in both film production and interactive communications. He is an award-winning commercial television director and was the Director of New Media at the acclaimed film production company, Colossal Pictures.  While there, Dewey led the company's transition from analog to digital communications formats.

Mr. Reid is widely credited with creating and implementing the first interactive entertainment-programming model for the web, which was developed while serving as Executive Creative Director at Microsoft. He also served as Chief Creative Officer of RedSky Interactive, the award-winning interactive agency.

Alticast is an industry leader in standards-based TV technologies, including Blu-ray Disc, the tru2way platform, and DVB-MHP. As Senior Vice President of Business Development and Marketing, Jeff Bonin oversees the company's North American product, marketing and business development activities, ensuring that Alticast products and services provide the maximum benefit to its customers and partners. Jeff has spent the last 15 years involved in software engineering, product marketing, and business development of embedded software and interactive television, and is passionate about open-standards solutions for television. Prior to Alticast, Jeff was the Director of Business Development at Vidiom Systems, where he was responsible for the company's product development and relationships with consumer electronics manufacturers. He has been a frequent speaker on the iTV business and its technologies at tradeshows and conferences around the world including TV of Tomorrow, Milia, IBC, NAB, JavaOne and NCTA.

Mark Garner is Senior Vice President, Distribution, Marketing and Business Development at A&E Television Networks. Garner oversees non-linear and digital content distribution, business development and affiliate marketing across all AETN networks including A&E Network, History, Bio Channel, History International and Crime & Investigation Network. Garner joined AETN in January, 2007 serving as Vice President, Distribution and Business Development. 

Prior to coming to AETN, Garner worked for Lifetime Entertainment Services beginning November of 2001 as Regional Account Director and rose to the position of Vice President of Distribution and Field Marketing.  He managed the affiliate sales and distribution efforts of the company’s three cable networks, Lifetime Television, Lifetime Movie Network (LMN) and Lifetime Real Women to multichannel video providers throughout the Eastern United States and the Caribbean. 

Garner worked as an executive at several start-up ventures, including a satellite broadcast distributed network based in Johannesburg South Africa, where he successfully increased the network’s distribution footprint from 5 African nations to 22 sub-Saharan countries.  Subsequent to his time in South Africa, he led business development efforts for a direct-to-consumer, on-line automotive sales venture during the dot com revolution. Garner has also held positions at MTV Networks and AT&T (formerly Pacific Bell) in sales, marketing and product management.

Amy Friedlander-Hoffman currently runs Priority Digital Media, a strategic consulting practice focused on content and distribution strategy across TV, broadband and mobile. Engagements include digital media strategy, entitlement of content across multiple platforms, broadband and cable content distribution, IPTV, VOD, rich media on-line advertising and software solutions for multiplatform content delivery and management.

Most recently, Amy was the Senior Vice President, Programming for AT&T Operations. As AT&T entered the video market to compete with cable and satellite, Amy oversaw the interactive programming and convergence for Project Lightspeed, the initiative to expand the fiber-optics network deeper into neighborhoods to deliver AT&T U-verse TV, AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet, U-verse Enabled and voice over IP services.

Amy was ultimately responsible for AT&T’s broadband programming, which included overseeing all online content negotiation and licensing, and execution of AT&T's broadband and three screen content plans for AT&T’s online services. Such services included Blue Room, Homezone, Broadband TV, U-verse OnTheGo and others.
Preceding AT&T, Ms. Friedlander-Hoffman headed a consulting practice, Xanthum Partners, which helped clients from around the globe with content strategy, development and deployment.

Mike Bologna,  Director of Emerging Communications at Groupm is known throughout the industry for his expertise in the field of digital communications. Mike’s primary role is to assist in the development of marketing and advertising applications for Groupm clients on advanced digital platforms, including interactive television, video on-demand, DVR and wireless; he has handled key digital campaigns for Paramount, Sears, Mattel, and At&t

As more and more clients choose to explore these new digital platforms, Mike helps them identify suitable partners and manages their initiatives to maximize learning, ROI and client satisfaction. 
Mike has been featured on Television Week’s Hot List as one of the top 10 players, age 35 or younger, who are making a mark on the industry. He is currently a member of the 4A’s Digital Video Innovation Committee and regularly authors An agency newsletter which provides news, views, and insights from the cutting edge of Emerging Communications.