Dr. Krystina Madej is an author, speaker, and Professor of the Practice at Georgia Tech, Atlanta. At Tech since 2011, she teaches about and researches how humans have adapted their narratives to changing media throughout the centuries, physical play and children's interaction with digital games that are based in narrative, and in Disney's approach to stories across media since the 1920s. Adjunct Professor with the School for Interactive Art and Technology (SIAT) at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, for ten years, she taught as Visiting Professor for the Center for Digital Media's Master’s degree program. She is research faculty at University of Lower Silesia, Wroclaw, Poland where as Visiting Professor she teaches Disney History and Children’s Game Design for the Erasmus Program and Design Thinking and History of Social Media for the Big Data, Digital Media, and Trendwatching Master’s Program. Prior to returning to academia in 1999, she was principal of a communications and design firm for 15 years, where, as design strategist, she planned and created successful branding programs and exhibits for government, business, industry, and museums.
Newton Lee is an author, educator, and futurist. He was the founder of Disney Online Technology Forum, creator of AT&T Bell Labs' first-ever commercial artificial intelligence tool, inventor of the world's first annotated multimedia OPAC for the U.S. National Agricultural Library, and longest serving editor-in-chief in the history of the Association for Computing Machinery for its publication Computers in Entertainment (2003–2018). Lee is the chairman of the California Transhumanist Party, education and media advisor to the United States Transhumanist Party, and president of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Virginia Tech with a B.S. and M.S. degree in Computer Science (specializingin Artificial Intelligence), and he earned a perfect GPA from Vincennes University with an A.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and an honorary doctorate in Computer Science. He has been honored with a Michigan Leading Edge Technologies Award, two community development awards from the California Junior Chamber of Commerce, and four volunteer project leadership awards from The Walt Disney Company.
