Check out the Speakers!

Will Thompson is a professional game designer, writer, and instructional designer. Will has published multiple educational video games and simulations at the University of Oklahoma's K20 Center. He has also co-authored multiple articles on game-based learning through is work at the K20 Center.
Will’s RPG contributions include writing for Paizo Press, Coyote and Crow, and three self-published RPG Zines. Will is also the designer of PaleoVet and the Zenobia Second-Place Award-winning Winter Rabbit. In his spare time (which is far too infrequent), Will researches obscure lore, pines to get lost in the forest, and paints tiny spacemen.

Bobby Lockhart is an award-winning designer of learning games with 10+ years experience in the field. He is currently working at CodeCombat on an unannounced Roblox title. He lives in Chicago with this wife and his poodle.

Kahentawaks is Mohawk from Kanehsatake. Her early years spent attending Kanien’kehá immersion school, growing traditional medicines, and practicing ceremonies inform much of her artistic practice today. After earning her DEC in Cinema, Video, and Communications from Dawson College she went on to study Computation Arts at Concordia University. She was soon recruited as a Research Assistant for Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace, and the Initiative for Indigenous Futures. In 2021 she  founded Revital Software, a company that specializes in the creation of Indigenous language learning video games.
 

Avery has been a teacher for over 20 years in 5 different countries. He co-founded Affordance Studio in 2013 and the company has clients throughout North America. His research on games and learning has been funded by different organizations including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). He is also the co-founder of the Association Edteq which brings together over 80 companies working in the field of education technology to help improve access to families and schools throughout Quebec.

Adam Kenneth Dubé is an Associate Professor of Learning Sciences and Director of the EdTech Office for the Faculty of Education at McGill University. He is the McGill Faculty of Education Distinguished Teacher award recipient, the head of the Technology, Learning, & Cognition Lab, and a joint Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and the Society of Research in Child Development in middle childhood education and development. He investigates and teaches how educational technology augments the learning process and collaborates with industry leaders (Ubisoft) to design educational technologies as well as guides for their use.

Jes (she/her) is a game designer, instructional designer, and adjunct faculty member at DePaul University. After finishing her MFA in Game Design, she founded the DePaul Instructional Game & Innovation (DIGI) Lab to collaborate with faculty members and create games for their classes. Jes also teaches game art, game design, and social media classes.

After a decade of honing his marketing skills in the shark-infested waters of B2B, Rami decided to switch industries to his true passion, videogames. He embarked on a peril-filled journey through the world of educational games for kids, and emerged with a treasure trove of marketing knowledge. If you talk to him, he will do his best to convince you to download Math Makers, an app that's proven to teach kids math through play. He also lectures at various colleges around Montreal, teaching videogame developers how to promote their games. When he’s not marketing videogames or teaching videogame marketing, he’s writing a bestselling novel and playing Tekken competitively.

Diogo is a designer, researcher, educator, and learner; always looking forward to global positive change. He currently works at the Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University (Denmark); and previously he worked at: School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong SAR), University of the West of England (UK), Barcelona Tech - UPC (Spain), Studio Fuksas - Rome (Italy), Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands), and University of Lisbon (Portugal).

​Effie is a Public Health Project Lead at Digital Public Square, a Toronto-based not-for-profit helping communities create solutions to their most pressing challenges. She has a background in public health and COVID-19 vaccine promotion, and is currently leading a project addressing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation online, with a specific focus on customizing tools to suit the information needs of equity-deserving communities in Canada.

Chris Colley is currently consulting on the Math, Science and Technology dossiers, among other varied technological projects. Chris has an extensive background in integrating technology, supporting educators, and creating STEAM spaces in schools. When not working with educators you can find Chris blogging about great music, making succulent food, noodling out songs, drawing lines and dots, playing with my lovely children or braving the Canadian elements.

Alan is a Producer/Game Developer who has worked on a variety of educational and gaming experiences, ranging from BAFTA-Nominated arithmetic game Twelve A Dozen to the always-entertaining Killer Queen Arcade.

Matthew Johnson is Director of Education for MediaSmarts, Canada's centre for digital media literacy. He is the architect of MediaSmarts' Use, Understand & Engage Digital Media Literacy Framework for K-12 schools and designer of many of resources including both digital and analog educational games.

Sana Maqsood is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at York University. She received her BSC, MSC, and PhD degrees in Computer Science from Carleton University in Ottawa. Prior to joining York, she was an Instructor at Carleton University, teaching undergraduate courses in Computer Science and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). She is interested in making computer security systems more usable and accessible for users and improving their understanding of these systems. She utilizes interactive technologies, such as games to improve users’ understanding of computer security. Her recent game (A Day in the Life of the Jos) for improving tweens’ understanding of security and privacy has been deployed to over 300 Canadian elementary schools by the non-profit MediaSmarts.

Chris Chancey is the CEO of ManaVoid Entertainment Inc, a Montreal-based 50+ person studio that has won Best Place to Work in Canada in 2021-2022 (GamesIndustry.biz). The company recently released Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan to critical acclaim (84 Metacritic, 93% positive on Steam, Multiple Awards Won). He is also the co founder of the Indie Asylum, a video game startup accelerator. In his work he has been able to invest in 6 video game startups. Currently, he is the president of the board of La Guilde du Jeu Vidéo du Québec amd teaches Game Design, Programming and Entrepreneurship in 2 Universities (UdeM, UQAT).

Rilla Khaled (PhD, Victoria University of Wellington) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada, where she teaches interaction design, design theory, programming, and more. She is the director of the Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) Research Centre, Canada's most well-established games research lab, in the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture, and Technology. Dr. Khaled's research is focused on the use of interactive technologies to improve the human condition, a career-long passion that has led to diverse outcomes, including designing award-winning serious games, developing a framework for game design specifically aimed at reflective outcomes, working with Indigenous communities to use contemporary technologies to imagine new, inclusive futures, creating speculative prototypes of near-future technologies, and establishing foundations for materials-based game design research.

David I. Waddington is a Professor in the Department of Education at Concordia University who specializes in the philosophy of education. Current research foci include teacher free speech, video games and citizenship, philosophical questions in science and technology education, and the history and philosophy of progressive education (esp. John Dewey). Dr. Waddington is also Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, a multi-institutional research centre that is recognized as one of Quebec's Strategic Clusters.

Scott DeJong is a Public Scholar and Communication PhD Candidate at Concordia University. His work explores issues of media literacy, play in the Canadian far right, and serious game design. He has designed games like an escape rooms about echo chambers or a board games about conspiracy theory. In his free time, Scott co-produces a podcast speaking with scholars and practitioners on how humour and games relate, co-manages the middle-state publication First Person Scholar, and runs workshops with local community groups about the fundamentals of game design.