Contributors
SPEAKERS:
Rome Viharo is a professional social media content/product developer, strategist, creative director, entrepreneur and futurist. His unique video social media services have supported such brands such as Google, Microsoft, Dell, Discover, SmartWater and Audi. He is currently Senior Vice President for Business Development and Innovations for Alphabird, a media/technology company.
He the developer of the ™Media Mandala, an innovative social media strategy tool, ™Fortu.nu - a social game and music distribution app, and™ Budo12 - a online discussion engine for negotiating optimal outcomes, conflict resolution and problem solving.
His creative background spans more than 20 years across multi media platforms, beginning as a recording artist (EMI) and award winning digital filmmaker (Slamdance, Digidance).
Maf Lewis
Maf graduated from the Exeter School of Design in the UK with a BA (Hons) 1st Class in product design.
In the world of viral marketing, he led the Viral Marketing department at NCompass, one of Hollywood’s biggest event marketers for clients such as Best Buy, Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven, and the CW Network. He later went on to form the viral marketing white label Zeitghost Media, whose specialty viral services are used for many of the world’s most famous brands including Mattel, Activation, H&M, Macmillan Publishing, Audi and Flo TV.
In late 2005, he distributed his first online movie trailer - it reached the front page of YouTube in less than 24hours. Since then, Maf has directed the marketing of hundreds of video campaigns that have gained in excess of 1 billion online views.
Maf has developed strategies, now standard in the publishing world (including serial book trailers and themed song downloads) for over 20 New York Times Best-sellers. He is now the “go-to man” for many of the world’s leading publishing houses.
ADVISORS:
Francis Paul Heylighen
Francis Paul Heylighen is a Belgian cyberneticist, and research professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking Free University of Brussels, where he directs the transdisciplinary research group on “Evolution, Complexity and Cognition”.
In 1996, Heylighen founded the “Global Brain Group”, an international discussion forum that groups most of the scientists who have worked on the concept of emergent Internet intelligence.
Together with his PhD student Johan Bollen, Heylighen was the first to propose algorithms that could turn the world-wide web into a self-organizing, learning network that exhibits collective intelligence, i.e. a Global brain.
In the 2007 article “The Global Superorganism: an evolutionary-cybernetic model of the emerging network society” Heylighen gave a detailed exposition of the superorganism/global brain view of society, and an examination of the underlying evolutionary mechanisms, with applications to the on-going and future developments in a globalizing world.
Dr James Fallon
Dr James Fallon is an American Neuroscientist. He received his biology and chemistry undergraduate training at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont and his psychology and psychophysics degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institutein New York.
He carried out his Ph.D. training in neuroanatomy and neurophysiology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, and his postdoctoral training in chemicalneuroanatomy at UC San Diego.
He is Professor of Anatomy and Neurobiology at UC Irvine where he has served as Chairman of the University faculty and Chair and President of the School of Medicine faculty. He is a Sloan Scholar, Senior Fulbright Fellow, National Institutes of Health Career Awardee, and recipient of a range of honorary degrees, awards, and sits on several corporate boards and national think tanks for science, biotechnology, the arts, and the US military. He is a Subject Matter Expert in the field of “cognition and war” to the Pentagon’s Joint Command.
Fallon has made significant scientific contributions in several neuroscientific subjects, including discoveries of TGF alpha, epidermal growth factor, and the first to show large-scale stimulation adult stem cells in the injured brain using growth factors. He has also made contributions in the fields of schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and the roles of hostility and gender in nicotine and cocaine addiction. He is also cited for his research in the basic biology of dopamine, norepinephrine, opioid peptides in the brain, connections of the cortex, limbic system, and basal ganglia in animals and humans. He has published in human brain imaging using positron emission tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, diffusion tensor imaging tractography techniques, and the new field of imaging genetics.
