We’ve collected some of the finest journalists covering the game industry to moderate the 28 different sessions at GamesBeat 2011, which takes place July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Our full agenda is here. Please meet the cast of characters.

Yukari Iwatani Kane of the Wall Street Journal. Yukari is a staff writer in the San Francisco office of the Journal. She has been writing about technology for nearly 15 years and has covered everything from telecom to consumer electronics in the Chicago, San Francisco and Tokyo offices. She currently focuses primarily on Apple and the industries it is involved with. Prior to the WSJ, she worked for Reuters and U.S. News and World Report. She will moderate a fireside chat with Neil Young, CEO of Ngmoco.

Cliff Edwards of Bloomberg Businessweek. Cliff covers the video games industry and consumer technology for Bloomberg Businessweek magazine and Bloomberg News, based out of the San Francisco bureau for the past 11 years. Edwards received his bachelor’s and his master’s degrees from Northwestern University, where he was also an adjunct professor of journalism for seven years. He will interview Andrej Nabergoj, CEO of Outfit7, about Entertainment Brands Born Through Mobile.

Charles Hudson of Bionic Panda Games and venture partner with SoftTech VC. Charles runs a mobile game company now. In the past, he was vice president of business development for Serious Business, which was acquired by Zynga in 2010. Prior to that, he worked at Gaia Interactive, Google, IronPort Systems, and In-Q-Tel. He founded Third Power, a conference and events company that was acquired by WebMediaBrands. He is moderating a session on Mobile Analytics.

Mark Friedler, gaming consultant. Mark is a consultant for game companies in the mobile, social and ad/media markets. He was a founder of companies including IndustryGamers.com (acquired by Eurogamer), GameDaily (acquired by AOL/Time Warner), Gigex, and V-Cast (acquired by Verizon Wireless). He’s also a veteran moderator at our GamesBeat events. He is moderating a session on Raising a Big Pile of Money.

Anand Iyer of IGN. Anand is the director of product management for mobile at IGN Entertainment. He leads all mobile and connected systems product efforts for the media and gaming company. Prior to IGN, he was a senior product manager at Microsoft, where he worked on developer and application platform for Windows Phone 7. He also worked at Cisco Systems. He is moderating a session on mobile social networks.

Anthony Ha, tech reporter at Adweek (previously a writer and editor at VentureBeat). Anthony recently left VentureBeat but we invited him back anyway. He previously worked as senior editor at VentureBeat and as a reporter at the Hollister Freelance. He is moderating a session on Monetizing Mobile.

Matthew Lynley of VentureBeat. Lynley is VentureBeat’s GreenBeat writer and serves as one of our main video game writers. He graduated from the University of North Carolina, where he studied math and physics, in May 2010. He has reported for Reuters and lives in San Francisco. He will moderate a panel on Augmented Reality Games.

Sana Choudary of YetiZen. Sana is co-founder and CEO of game startup accelerator YetiZen. She has expertise in virality, engagement, monetization and community marketing. She has worked with companies such as MTV Networks’ AddictingGames and Shockwave properties. Sana runs the SF Game Developers Workshop. She is moderating our “Who’s Got Game?” startup contest and a session on investing in mobile and social games.

Japheth Dillman of YetiZen. JP Dillman is the co-founder and chief creative officer of game start-up accelerator YetiZen. He began making games over 20 years ago, taking collegiate classes in programming at the age of 10. He started out making games on the Tandy 500 and Apple III. He is a producer, game designer and evangelist. He has served in roles as executive producer and lead game designer at studios such as Bigpoint, Digital Chocolate, Flying Wisdom Studios, Chugulu, Aftershock Innovations and many others. Right now he is helping mentor start-ups at YetiZen and he jointly runs the SF Game Developers Workshop. He is moderating a session on the Rise of Cross-Platform Games.

Rich Wong of Accel Partners. Rich is a partner at venture capital firm Accel. He invested in AdMob, which was acquired by Google. He is on the boards of Parature, SunRun and Getjar Networks. Prior to Accel, he was at Openwave, Covad Communications, McKinsey and Procter & Gamble. He led the company’s investment in Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds, and he will interview Wibe Wagemans of mobile game company Rovio in a fireside chat.

Eric Goldberg of Crossover Technologies. Eric is a 30-year veteran of the game industry, serving in capacities ranging from game designer to executive. Since 2002, he has been a board member of, advisor to, or consultant for over 30 consumer-facing technology companies, from seed stage to public, in the game, virtual world, consumer Internet, wireless data, and monetization sectors and to three US venture capital firms. Previously, he was co-founder and president of Unplugged Games and president of West End Games, an adventure game company. His award-winning games include Paranoia, Tales of the Arabian Nights, The Tom Peters Business School in a Box, and MadMaze, the first online game to draw one million players. Goldberg helped judge our contest for the last couple of years. He is moderating a panel on Mobile Game Discovery.

Jeferson Valadares of Flurry. Jeferson is general manager of games at Flurry. He has more than 10 years of mobile and Facebook game studio leadership experience. He has worked on titles for brands such as EA Sports, Fifa, Harry Potter, Need for Speed and Hasbro. At Electronic Arts, he was the first creative director for EA Mobile and was studio director for Playfish. He ran Digital Chocolate’s biggest studio, which produced hits such as Tower Bloxx and Crazy Penguin Catapult. He is moderating a session on free-to-play games.

Margaret Wallace of Playmatics & Shadow Government. Margaret is an entrepreneur and runs Playmatics, which is bringing rich user experiences to the internet in social media networks. She is also CEO of Shadow Government, a social mobile start-up that recently raised $1 million. Prior to these gigs, she was CEO of Rebel Monkey and of Skunk Studios. She is moderating a session on Gamifying Mobile Apps.

Loyd Case, technology writer. Loyd is a freelance technology writer and analyst, focusing on PC and gaming related technologies. He has written about gaming hardware and game-related technology since 1994, when he took on the task of writing a roundup of PC graphics cards for Computer Gaming World — the first ever written specifically for computer gamers. Loyd has written extensively about PC and gaming technology for a variety of publications, including PC World, Maximum PC, ExtremeTech, Tested.com, Tom’s Hardware, PC Gamer and many others. He’s also written a couple of books on building high-end gaming PCs. When he doesn’t have his head buried inside a PC, he dabbles in photography, PC gaming, board games, and home theater. He is moderating a session on Game Engines: Evolving Beyond Consoles and PCs.

Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities. Michael is frequently quoted in the press and does regular video segments, dubbed Pach Attack for GameTrailers.com. He has spent more than 20 years as a finance professional. He has served as the research director at Wedbush Morgan Securities and as a director at Management Resource Center.

Eric Eldon of Inside Network. Eric is the editor of Inside Network’s news sites. Prior to that, he was the first employee at VentureBeat starting in 2007 and became an editor and lead writer for social networking. Prior to that, he co-founder WriteWith, a writing software startup.

George Jones of Invention Media. George is a 17-year veteran of the video game and technology industries. He started at Computer Gaming World in 1994 and ran editorial teams there and at CNET, GamePro and most recently Maximum PC. He is currently starting a new media company that will explore how tablet devices are revolutionizing industries across the planet.

Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. Yours truly has worked at VentureBeat covering games and other tech stories since 2008. Prior to that, I worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald.

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive game technologies and business models at our third annual GamesBeat 2011conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the disruptive trends in the mobile games market. GamesBeat is co-located with our MobileBeat 2011conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com. Our sponsors include Qualcomm, Flurry, Greystripe, Nexage, Tapjoy, Open Feint, Sibblingz, Fun Mobility, TriNet, Zong, Spil Games and WildTangent.

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Obama Addresses Defense Spending, Vets at Twitter Town Hall

July 06, 2011 10:45 PM

ABC News' Kristina Wong reports:

Defense spending and support for members of the military was brought up five separate times today as the president fielded questions over jobs and the economy in his first Twitter town hall.

President Obama made it clear he wanted to reduce defense spending, but emphasized it would be gradual.

“We can’t simply lop off 25 percent off the defense budget overnight,” he said. “We have to think about all the obligations we have to our current troops who are in the field and making sure they're properly equipped and safe.”

“In some cases we've got outdated equipment; that needs to be replaced. And so I'm committed to reducing the defense budget,” Obama said. “As commander in chief, one of the things that we have to do is make sure that we do it in a thoughtful way that's guided by our security and our strategic needs. And I think we can accomplish that.”

New Study Says Wars Cost Over $3.2 Trillion

A new report by Brown University’s Eisenhower Study Group estimates the current and obligated cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars at between $3.2 to $4 trillion, versus the frequently cited $1.2 trillion appropriated by Congress so far.

“We've ended the war in Iraq, our combat mission there, and all our troops are slated to be out by the end of this year. We've already removed 100,000. I announced that we are going to begin drawing down troops in Afghanistan and pivot to a transition process where Afghans are taking more responsibility for their defense. But we have to do all of this in a fairly gradual way,” Obama said.

The president said reducing defense spending would leave more money for other domestic programs.

“The nice thing about the defense budget is it's so big, it's so huge, that, you know, a one percent reduction is the equivalent of the education budget,” Obama said, but quickly followed up with, “I’m exaggerating. But it's so big that you can make relatively modest changes to defense that end up giving you a lot of headroom to fund things like basic research or student loans or things like that.”

“I'm somebody who believes that we can constantly improve any program, whether it's a defense program -- you know, those who say that we can't cut military at all, you know, they haven't spent a lot of time looking at military budgets,” he said.

Enough Money for Vet Care?

“We've got to make sure that we are meeting our commitments for those veterans who are coming home,” he added. The Brown University report warns the cost of taking care of veterans will rise in the next several decades and peak in 30 to 40 years, and this will especially be the case for veterans of the current wars.

“Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are utilizing VA medical services and applying for disability benefits at much higher rates than in previous wars. Based on current patterns of benefit claims and medical usage, it is estimated that the total present value of such costs for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans over the next 40 years is in the range of $600 billion to $1 trillion,” the report states.

“There is no provision set aside to cover these future obligations. Given that our pledge to care for veterans is a form of 'deferred compensation', we should appropriate funds for these inevitable long-term costs at the time we budget for the wars in which they will fight,” the report recommends.

Tax Breaks for Hiring Vets

Prompted by a question, the president said he would potentially create a tax break for companies hiring honorably discharged veterans, a population suffering from higher-than-national unemployment rates.

“This is a something that I've been talking a lot about internally,” the president said. “We've got all these young people coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, have made incredible sacrifices, have taken on incredible responsibilities -- you know, you see some 23-year-old who's leading a platoon in hugely dangerous circumstances, making decisions, operating complex technologies. These are folks who can perform, but unfortunately, what we're seeing is that a lot of these young veterans have a higher unemployment rate than people who didn't serve. And that makes no sense,” the president said.

“So what we'd like to do is potentially combine a tax credit for a company that hires veterans with a campaign to have private companies step up and do the right thing and hire more veterans," he said.

"And one of the things that we've done is internally, in the federal government, we have made a huge emphasis on ramping up our outreach to veterans and hiring of veterans, and this has been a top priority of mine. The notion that these folks who are sacrificing for our freedom and our security end up coming home and not being able to find a job, I think, is unacceptable.”

July 6, 2011
in Afghanistan, Economy, Kristina Wong, President Obama
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Obama Addresses Defense Spending, Vets at Twitter Town Hall

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