Joe Nickolls is Vice President and General Manager of Maxis, a division of Electronic Arts (EA) located in Redwood Shores, California. Joe oversees the development of industry-leading titles such as The Sims, one of the world’s top simulation games and top ten selling franchises in gaming history. The Sims is among the biggest brands in the business, with hundreds of millions of players across the globe and well over 20 million social media followers.

In addition, Joe oversees development of mobile products from Track 20 in Helsinki (Sim City Build-it) , and other development at EA Austin.

Throughout his 19 years in the videogame industry, Joe has had the pleasure of working on some of the biggest gaming franchises including FIFA, FIFA STREET, Champions League, NHL, The Simpsons, and more.

He has also spent time as Studio GM at Capcom Vancouver, and has worked at Microsoft Vancouver and Radical Entertainment.

Joe has been in the entertainment industry his entire career, beginning in radio and record companies. Before joining EA, Joe worked as Promotions and Marketing Manager at major music record label PolyGram (Universal Music Group Canada) working with top acts such as Elton John, INXS, Portishead, Shaina Twain and Bon Jovi. But video games and entertainment is where his true passion lies.

Hoa Bui is a Senior Technical Artist at Riot Games. Before joining Riot Games, Hoa has worked for years in Animation at Pixar-Canada and Lucasfilm Animation solving workflow challenges and scaling content pipelines. Hoa enjoys RPGs. His 2 favorite games of all time are Xenogears and Final Fantasy Tactics.

Computer Engineer and Business Developer turned OS Manager. Focused my career on forming the right teams, processes and business models to enable successful collaborations with great results. Passionate about creating awesome content with happy teams! Proud owner of a dog and too many bikes.

In 2015, Nicolas started at elite3d as a Prop & Environment Artist. During this time, he worked in multiple AAA projects mainly for the Call of Duty series. In late 2016, Nicolas got the chance to take on the role of Lead Artist at elite3d continuing the work done for the CoD series and other unreleased titles. In Autumn of 2018, he started his current position as Producer for elite3d where he got the chance to work with Ghost and other different teams within EA.

Christian has a long history of leadership in the video game industry, with a particular focus on improving developer workflow and process. He is currently part of the League of Legends leadership team at Riot Games, where he leads the Sustainability Initiative. This Initiative is responsible for most of the non-player facing aspects of League of Legends, including developer tools and workflows, content pipelines, and core technology.

Curtis Cherrington is a gaming industry veteran with over 30 years of experience and over 30 credited titles. He has developed games for such companies as Midway, THQ, Fox, Disney Interactive and now Electronic Arts where he is a Senior Manager of Worldwide External Development (XDI). He supports a significant number of EA’s studios with support in all disciplines as well as having keen understanding of the technology involved. He has negotiated numerous deals from both a publisher and vendor perspective resulting in well into the 100’s of millions of revenue.

Since joining the Halo Team, Casey Wu was excited to take on the challenges of managing a co-development relationship and flexing her muscles in an area where she excels – bringing people together. Her additional responsibilities include running lead production on Workflows and serving on the core leadership team for XBOX Women in Gaming. Casey previously enjoyed many years at Vicarious Visions and Blizzard Entertainment before moving up to the Seattle area in January 2014 to work at 343 Industries.

Carla has been focused on External Development for Video Games since 2009 at studios such as nDreams, Imaginati Studios, and Lionhead (Microsoft Studios). In 2017, Carla acquired an External Development Manager role in Vancouver at The Coalition (XBOX Game Studios) managing due diligence, on-boarding, and maintenance of external teams across the world. Carla’s passion for process, team management, and KPIs has led her to host various talks at XDS conferences, and she has been a member of the XDS Advisory Committee since September 2018.