Gary William Flake Technical Fellow Microsoft Corp.

Gary Flake is responsible for bridging Microsoft Research and Windows Live, and for setting the technology vision and future direction of Windows Live, web search, desktop search, and commercial search efforts. He is also a founder and director of Live Labs, which represents Microsoft’s greatest investment in applied research focused on Internet technologies. Before joining Microsoft, Dr. Flake founded Yahoo! Research Labs, ran Yahoo’s corporate R&D activities and companywide innovation efforts, and was Overture’s chief science officer. Before joining Overture, he was a research scientist at NEC Research Institute and the leader of its web data-mining program. Dr. Flake has numerous publications focused on machine learning, data mining, and self-organization. His other research interests include web measurements, efficient algorithms, models of adaptation inspired by nature, and time series forecasting. He is the author of The Computational Beauty of Nature, widely used in college courses.

 

Frederik Fleck Chief Executive Officer SMS Guru

Frederik Fleck is a European serial entrepreneur. His latest venture is SMS Guru, a mobile search entity that uses popular text messaging services and can be accessed from any mobile phone. In 2005 Mr. Fleck founded Ostrich Media, an interactive quiz TV production company that he built into an international organization operating in five countries. Ostrich Media was acquired in 2007 by Buongiorno. Previously Mr. Fleck was part of the senior management team of 9Live interactive TV, where he was responsible for the Strategic Marketing Division. In 2005, Germany’s largest TV group, ProSiebenSat.1, acquired 9Live. Mr. Fleck began his career as part of a startup team that developed the Berlin-based expert advice platform Questico. He was responsible for business development and implemented Questico’s TV strategy. Mr. Fleck also invests in businesses. His portfolio includes the leading German online karaoke platform, an online video advertising network, and a rapidly growing entertainment auction site.

dennis FonG CEO and Founder Raptr

Dennis Fong is the founder and CEO of Raptr, a social games platform that aggregates a user’s gaming activity across all platforms into a single gamer identity. He previously was a co-founder and chief gaming officer of Xfire, an instant messenger designed for gamers. Mr. Fong is regarded as the “Michael Jordan of Videogames” by the Wall Street Journal and has always been passionate about finding ways to improve the gaming experience. Before Xfire, he co-founded Lithium Technologies, a leading provider of on-demand solutions for enterprise communities such as AT&T, Dell, Sony, and Paypal; and Gamers.com, the leading games portal as rated by Nielsen NetRatings in 2000.

 

ralph FoonG

Director, San Francisco

Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB)

Ralph Foong, EDB’s director, San Francisco, since 2005, is responsible for establishing long-term partnerships between Singapore and Northern California companies in the infocomm and media, electronics, transport engineering, clean technology, and nonprofit sectors. He is also responsible for EDB’s interests in Western Canada and Alaska. Before his appointment to the San Francisco office, Mr. Foong was assistant head in EDB’s infocomm and media cluster. During that time, he was involved in EDB’s push to grow the telecom professional services sector in Singapore and to promote investments from leading European and Asian telecom equipment and Indian IT services companies. Mr. Foong joined the EDB in 2001. His current areas of interest include the consumer and enterprise Internet; data centers; artificial intelligence; digital animation, visual effects, and games; as well as green buildings and green transportation solutions. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and UC Berkeley, respectively.