#rollabear

Last week Jeff went down to a not-so- sunny Brighton for the Develop Conference 2012. Not only was he attending the conference, but he also gave a talk on the evolution of casual gaming and the rise of IPTV.

For those of you who don’t already know, Jeff had a special guest with him during his talk – Warwick Davis! Warwick joined Jeff on stage to talk about his upcoming app Pocket Warwick.  It has been a fantastic experience working alongside Warwick in producing the app, and his comedy/acting skills have really helped give the app that unique edge – keep an eye out for it hitting an app store near you very soon!

We would like to thank Warwick for participating in the talk and taking part in the panel – his opinions on the experience of working with Matmi to develop his app made for some interesting discussion! Also a big thanks to Warwick for taking part in this unusual stunt – it was great to see the shocked audience reaction most of whom were not expecting to see an international film star take the stage.   

Finally, a massive thank you to the other panellists, Volker Hirsch (Head of Games at Blackberry) and Mike Hawkyard (Chairman of Casual games at TIGA and New Business Director of 4T2) whose contributions helped make the panel a great success.

 Jeff’s talk focused on the convergence of media, potentially the biggest change the digital landscape has seen since the first smartphones appeared. The talk also touched on Matmi’s predictions for the future  of end user content - “content belongs to the user not the device” which is particularly relevant to us now due to the  imminent release of Rollabear which will be published across more devices than Matmi has ever attempted  before.

Jeff really enjoyed doing the talk – especially some of the slightly surreal questions from the audience at the end!  It was also really interesting for him to see the division of peoples’ opinions on the subject of IPTV, with some people believing IPTV will be a huge success, and others believing it won’t take off at all.

Some closing words from Jeff himself “ The rest of the conference was fantastic, jam packed, informative and really enjoyable-It was nice to see the Oliver twins who made Dizzy Games and hear their take on the industry, both now and in the future and it was great to meet the rest of the TIGA team. " 

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It’s a busy week for Jeff this week , today he’s heading down to Brighton for the Develop Conference . Not only is Jeff attending the conference he is also really looking forward to giving a talk tomorrow (Tuesday 10th, 10:20) on the evolution of casual gaming and the rise of IPTV, and let’s not forget that this will be no ordinary talk, this will be a talk with a very special twist…

For those of you lucky enough to be going to the conference why not pop along to Jeff’s talk and find out what this twist is.  Other than that it will be a whirlwind week of business meetings , and networking for Jeff. Keep an eye out for him if you’re down there!

Matmi keeps rollin' on....

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There have been quite a few big changes at Matmi over the last couple of months – new projects, new staff, new babies and some great future opportunities in the pipeline – exciting times! 

James has been mastering his role as Project Manager, and Michelle has now stepped into Operations Management - keeping the other Matmian’s on their toes and Jeff in tow! We’ve also been working with Liane Grimshaw, tapping into her vast knowledge of the digital industry which has been a great insight.

So then, we have Helen here as our Office Administrator and Social Media assistant, and our lovely designer Jen is here full time (after getting a distinction for her Master’s Degree in Games Design!) Joe, Jeff and Woody have been working their hearts out on Rollabear - Matmi’s upcoming release – so fingers crossed they can have their evenings back again soon!

We’d like to thanks all the promising work experience students who have recently helped out and (we hope) learnt a thing or two along the way – big thumbs up to Tom, John and Lucas for all their hard work – now looking forwards to having Tom back for his Uni’ gap year.

Congratulations to our Lead Designer Matt who just tied the knot, the other big news here has been BABIES! We have two very proud new dads at Matmi, Rob had a beautiful little girl called Lily Mae and Stewart’s little bundle of love, Esme, arrived this week. 

Finally, when we were asked to put on youth workshops in character design for the local Barnaby Festival – we jumped at the chance, and the sessions were the first to sell out. Matmi created a mobile optimised website for the Barnaby treasure hunt.