Final additions for GamesBeat@GDC: Relan, Friedler

I’d like to announce the final set of speakers for our upcoming  GamesBeat@GDC executive game conference. The event is set for March 10 in San Francisco at the Game Developers Conference in the Moscone Convention Center.

Peter Relan, chairman of Crowdstar, Sibblingz, and Aurora Feint. He will appear in our panel on Disruptive Game Platforms. Relan is the Chairman of popular social gaming company CrowdStar, creator of Happy Aquarium and Happy Pets. He is also the founder and chairman of YouWeb, the incubator behind Aurora Feint: maker of OpenFeint, the iPhone’s fastest growing social gaming network; and Sibblingz, a company building a multi-channel social gaming platform for developers. Relan has spent the last 25 years in Silicon Valley in the networking, software, consumer and mobile services industry, both as product development executive at Oracle and Hewlett Packard and as a serial entrepreneur. Relan is also an active angel investor in, and board member and advisor to, a number of early stage companies.

Mark Friedler, business consultant and publisher of Industry Gamers. He will moderate our panel on a Sea of Mobile Devices. Friedler is a serial entrepreneur who has founded and sold three companies. He started GameDaily and grew it to one of world’s largest video games websites and ad networks. It was acquired by TimeWarner AOL in 2006. He was an AOL executive until late 2007. Previously, he founded Gigex, the leading download service for game and software demos. He started Internet content delivery company V-Cast, Inc, which was acquired by Verizon Wireless. He spent six years in Europe where he was Managing Director of Teleworld, a division of Philips Media, that operated interactive TV services with MTV. His first business was a cookie store chain in Sweden. Friedler consults with a variety of companies building their businesses. He is also an investor and board member of several Internet companies.

Here’s a review of our theme for the conference:

Disruption 2.0. We’ll focus on the next disruptions that will happen in the video game industry. In the past couple of years, social games with virtual goods business models have proved themselves and shaken up the status quo. The iPhone has become a hot platform, and Apple hopes to extend further into games with the iPad. Digital distribution and online games are growing. Will these trends gather more momentum and prove to be sustainable, or will new platforms and business models disrupt the disruptors?

The big game companies and brands are maneuvering into the market, even as successful startups are consolidating their gains and acquiring companies. Are console game makers poised to make a comeback as the recession ends? As growth returns to the industry in 2010, who will be poised to take market share and define the next-generation of games? Game companies that are doing the disrupting, adapting and growing will be speaking at the conference.

Who’s Got Game contest: The deadline has passed for our contest for best game startup. We received a total of 39 entries online and the judges are doing their initial evaluations now. The top finalists will appear on stage at GamesBeat@GDC before a panel of expert judges. Those judges will select the final winner.

For more conference info, check out our GamesBeat 2010 web site and our Facebook Group for GamesBeat@GDC. The full agenda is now posted at both of those locations. Our sponsors include the Georgia Department of Economic Development, PlaySpan, AdMob, and hi5.