Digital Hollywood Spring, 2016

Wednesday, October 21st, 2015

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Session III: Ballroom Terrace

The Immersive World of Kids – A Wonderland of VR-AR-Immersive - Games, Toys, Rides and Apps

Mason Williams, Senior Manager, Mattel Digital Play Production, Mattel, Inc.

Sherry Gunther Shugerman, CEO, Popstar Club, Inc. / The Beatrix Girls (Emmy Winnier, The Simpsons)

Tony Christopher, CEO/President and Founder, Landmark Entertainment Group

Lynn Rogoff, founder, AMERIKIDS USA

Elsie Mullers, Director of International Business Development and Partnerships, WIR Group

Moderator, Adam Berns, COO and Co-Founder, Brainrush, Inc.

theater tours such as “The Rolling Stones: Bridges to Babylon,” “Ghostbusters Live Stage Spectacular,” “Jesus Christ Superstar National Tour and many others.  Landmark Entertainment Group recently announced their new VR arm and their out-of-home mixed reality entertainment and educational destination concept that fuses art, culture and retail with virtual reality, augmented reality and themed architecture and design called the L.IV.E. Centre™. The L.I.V.E. Centre™ attractions will include an interactive museum, a virtual zoo and aquarium, a digital art gallery, a live entertainment stage, an immersive movie theatre and themed experience retail. The company is also developing an in-home daily-use VR application and a fully immersive in-home virtual reality theme park-inspired destination, both of which will be announced in the near future.

Mason Williams is the Senior Manager of Digital Play Production at Mattel. He leads a group of producers, developers, and technologists who are tasked with creating digital experiences that directly interact with physical toy products. In 2015, Mattel is relaunching its classic View Master brand with a wide array of content that utilizes both AR and VR.

Elsie Mullers, Director of International Business Development and Partnerships, WIR Group: Elsie is in charge of establishing and building international partnerships and alliances for WIR Group and AR&Co, Asia's leading Augmented Reality and Innovative Technology Company. Established in 2009, AR&Co. is considered one of the pioneers that brought the technology to Indonesia. In addition, WIR Group houses DMID Holland, a leading brand consultancy firm with combined expertise in strategy, design, and people engagement with strong market presence in emerging markets including Indonesia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. Together with AR&Co, they have dealt with hundreds of brands for the regional and global marketplace including Cartoon Network, Disney, Caltex, Unilever, and Danone. With a degree in Communication, Elsie's experiences include working at Credit Suisse, Tiffany & Co., CBS Radio (formerly Infinity Broadcasting), and in the real estate and commodities industries.

Lynn Rogoff is in the forefront of groundbreaking multimedia content. Rogoff works as a game producer, director, writer and professor.

Lynn Rogoff, founder of, AMERIKIDS USA is launching their 3D Endanger! game series for Oculus Rift. Now you can take action by playing their Endanger! game to end  Endangered Species from extinction.  Endanger!  is the first 3D mobile/PC game to virtually and socially find & save endangered species and their habitats. Experience their habitat loss and poachers traps from the animal’s point of view, inside forests and jungles, around the planet. Our mission is to engage young people in social media activism and branding while having fun with green planet issues. The GreenKids Media© vision is on Instagram, Tumbler, Facebook, Flipboard, Twitter, Google+ and Linkedin. Presently, we design games that are both illuminating and entertaining, focusing on 36 endangered species, worldwide. Currently, we are collaborating with  Saving Species.org.  AMERIKIDS USA® began GreenKids Media© to develop social media products and to design games for finding and saving endangered species. We focus on conservation, environmentalism and social media engagement. GreenKids Media© Endanger Games are the first 3D mobile/PC games to virtually and socially find and save endangered species in their habitats. Dr .E.O Wilson and Dr. Stewart Pimm, renowned Conservation Scientists organization, Saving Species.org, have partnered with us to enable citizen conservationists to become pro- active, globally.

Sherry Gunther Shugerman, CEO of PopStar Club, Inc., is a two-time Emmy-Award winning producer, media executive, and entrepreneur.  Sherry spent the first twenty years of her career both as a studio executive and producing some of television’s most lucrative and successful animated hits, before shifting over to innovate in the new media space.  Currently, Sherry is heading up a start-up media/toy company, where she created and is building the multi-platform media brand, The Beatrix Girls.  Her producer and Executive Producer credits include:  The Simpsons, Family Guy, Duckman, Edith Ann, Rugrats, Dexter’s Laboratory, Cow and Chicken, Johnny Bravo, The Powerpuff Girls, Looney Tunes and more.  Aside from being a creator and a producer, Sherry became a prominent entertainment- industry executive, heading-up and launching new divisions and innovating new content and productions for such studios as Klasky Csupo, Hanna Barbera, Warner Bros., Twentieth Century Fox Television, Nickelodeon, Imagine Television, Walt Disney's Touchstone Television, Carsey-Warner, and The Disney Channel.  In 2006, Sherry shifted her focus to New Media, where she created, co-founded and launched ZooKazoo.com, an innovative new virtual world for kids ages 6 to12.  Zookazoo launched to critical acclaim from established media companies.  The site was named: “Best for kids’ destination on the web” by Real Simple Family Magazine in the fall of 2008 and received a $100M buy-out offer within a year of funding.  Sherry then went on to found a second digital media company, Masher Media Inc., where she and her team built an evolutionary new 3D multi-player social game community for kids ages 6-12 for web, tablet and mobile.  Presently, Since summer of 2011, Sherry continues her entrepreneurial efforts with PopStar Club, Inc., where she has developed a multi platform media brand-  The Beatrix Girls.  The new line of fashion dolls who are a pop-star band, features original music, video webisodes, and several ground-breaking toy lines.  The music is currently in wide digital distribution on iTunes, Amazon, Pandora, and Spotify, and the videos are viewable through several digital outlets and networks.  The brand has 8 licensees on board, and the dolls were launched on the shelves of Toys R Us and Justice in the fall of 2013, expanding retail distribution in 13 countries so far.  The company is VC funded and continues to expand as a media content and consumer product company.  Through her years in entertainment, Sherry has demonstrated a sincere dedication to quality content. She has been honored for her outstanding work with numerous awards including two Emmy-Awards, a Cable-Ace award, a Humanitas Award, and five additional Emmy nominations.  Sherry earned her BS degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and her MBA from the University of Southern California (USC), where she is now an adjunct professor teaching classes in media and entrepreneurship.  She resides with her family in Calabasas, California.

Adam Berns has extensive experience in entertainment, media and technology. Adam’s most recent company is BrainRush, Inc, an educational software company he founded with video game legend Nolan Bushnell (Atari, Chuck E. Cheese). BrainRush uses video game technology in educational software. Adam is currently involved in AR and VR with BrainRush and other entertainment properties.  Previously, Adam co-founded Neural ID, a venture backed pattern recognition company based upon a proprietary neural network technology Adam was Executive VP of Business Development/Strategy and General Counsel of Hiwire, where he oversaw the rollout of ad insertion technology to Clear Channel, ABC Radio, MusicMatch and many other radio entities. Adam also spent several years as the CEO of 3Vision, a company that produced both feature films and videogames, and produced theFox Hunt, the first movie ever created from a videogame. He started his career as a media/technology and corporate attorney at Latham & Watkins. Mr. Berns holds a law degree and an MBA from UCLA, and a B.A. in Economics with distinction from Stanford University.