Announcing: The 2009 Building Our Future Conference Attendees

The second annual Richard Gottlieb’s Building Our Future Conference, a “by invitation” only event, will take place on September 29 and 30 at the Playthings Magazine headquarters in Manhattan.   Like last year, we have invited thought leaders to come to New York and discuss the future of the toy industry.  

Our mix consists of a robotics expert, a lawyer, a financial analyst, a publicist, a sales expert, the CEO of a virtual worlds development company, a toy industry stock analyst, two authors and several entrepreneurs, company leaders and founders, inventors, marketers, designers, the Vice President of Collections for the Strong National Museum of Play® which follows our history and the editor of Playthings which follow our present.   And that’s not all …we have the leaders of the TIA which represents toy manufactures, ASTRA which represent specially toy retailers, and Engage! Digital Media® which represent the virtual world industry.  

We are very excited to have such a great group of thinkers around the table. Here is the roster, in alphabetical order, of attendees:

Andrea Barthello, Founder, Chairman of the Board, ThinkFun, Inc

Patti Becker, President and Founder, Becker Associates LLC

Gina Beebe, President/Owner, G. Beebe & Associates, Inc.

Chris Bensch,Vice President for Collections, Strong National Museum of Play

Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, Associate Professor, MIT Media Lab

Peggy Brown, Principal, Author, Inventor, Designer, Artist, Consultant and more

Randy Horn, President, Zobmondo

Gerrick Johnson, Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Carter Keithley, President, Toy Industry Association

Rick Locker, Attorney, Outside Counsel Toy Industry Association, Locker Greenberg and Brainin

Bruce Lund, President, Lund and Company Invention, L.L.C.

Brian Maggio, Principal, Revenew Sales & Marketing                        

Kathleen McHugh, President, American Specialty Toy Retailing Association

Lisa Orman, President , Kidstuff PR

Arete Passas, Consultant

Laura Rangel, President and Co-Founder, KidsGive, LLC

Christopher V. Sherman, Executive Director, Founder, Engage Digital Media

Ron Solomon, President/CEO, The Credit Collective, LLC

Bill Uzell, Executive Vice President , Oregon Scientific, Inc.

Kim Vandenbroucke, Innovator, Game Inventor & Developer

Sibley Verbeck, Founder and CEO, The Electric Sheep Company

I will also be putting on a Building Our Future event in Nuremberg in association with the Spielwarenmesse Toy Fair Nuremberg. That list of attendees will be announced later in the year.

If you would like to be considered for next year’s event, please contact me directly at richard@usatoyexperts.com. We are looking for thought leaders who think and care deeply about the toy industry as well as play and who are both good talkers and listeners.