Jon Arklay

CTV
Vice President of Creative, Design and Brand

Jon Arklay is the Vice President of Creative, Design and Brand for the CTV Creative Agency, an in-house division which oversees branding, design, and promotion for CTV's media assets. Jon has been in the media industry since 1991, starting in Promotions with Q107 radio and holding positions as Creative Director at TSN and Director of Creative Services at CTV.

CTV operates Canada's #1 television network with 27 stations across the country, including 30 specialty channels such as TSN, MuchMusic, MTV, Discovery Channel, Space, The Comedy Network, and Business News Network, their related websites, and CHUM Radio, which operates 34 radio stations throughout Canada.

Jon also sits on the Board of Directors for PromaxBDA, an international association for the world's leading promotion, marketing, and design professionals in the entertainment industry.

Peter Jin Hong

Google
UX Design Group, Search Engineering

Peter Jin Hong has been a professional innovation catalyst and story "collector" for over 10 years. Most of his career has been as an award-winning Creative Director and pioneer of User Experience innovation/strategy business units – at Blast Radius, Tribal DDB, and Organic for clients such as KAYAK, CarMax, AOL, Nike, EA, Sony, Honda, and BMW.

Valuing mentorship, Peter has guided many promising individuals, who themselves have become successful creative directors for other renowned agencies, including R/GA, Wieden+Kennedy, Ogilvy, Publicis Modem, Critical Mass, Organic, and Tribal DDB.

Whether re-envisioning a car-buying experience for the rest of us through natural language and walk-up-kick-the-tires approach (CarMax.com) or reminding us of the romance/reality of travel and while navigating through the logic of decision trees (KAYAK.com's flippy sign-board and meta-filter search strategy) his solutions are rooted in meaningful and relevant human experiences... our stories.

Presently, Peter is working with the User Experience group at Google in Search Engineering and Mobile, delving into everyday problems and future solutions for a billion people: solutions that come from a humanistic perspective, by looking at what makes us tick and what is meaningful because of our bodies, minds, and social interactions; examining physiology, neurology, and emotions as a basis for optimizing cognition and utility. From ground-breaking research on faster ways to visually scan, predict, and remember to collaborations with the foremost neuroscientist on neuroplasticity to see how we could all be "smarter", Peter believes we can all find human-empowered solutions in this digital age.

Michael Oliver

Vice President, Creative Director, The Marketing Store Worldwide

Connect, Collect, Communicate, Collaborate, Create: 5 words (that just happen to start with"C") that describe why Michael Oliver loves being a Creative Director. By combing these 5 things in his daily approach to directing creative teams, Michael has discovered a unique way to balance his hunger for creativity with the need to drive business results.

Currently, Michael is the Vice President, Creative Director at The Marketing Store Worldwide, a brand activation agency specializing in shopper marketing, CRM and loyalty programs for some of the world's biggest brands. He directs a multidisciplinary creative team tasked with delivering integrated marketing solutions for the agency's largest clients, including Nissan, McDonald's, Coke, and Infiniti.

Before joining The Marketing Store in 2010, Michael spent 10 years working his way through the ranks at Blast Radius, helping to open the first office for the digital agency in Toronto as a designer, and later guiding teams as a Creative Director in the Toronto, New York, Vancouver, and Amsterdam offices. Solving problems and creating innovative digital experiences for Electronic Arts, BMW, Microsoft, and Starbucks represent just a few of his many highlights.

Michael is a regular volunteer speaker and portfolio assessor for the Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario, and the York Sheridan Design Program. He has given presentations at industry events hosted by the Canadian Marketing Association and Association of Canadian Advertisers. Michael is a regular judge for the FITC awards, and has been a jury member for the Canadian National Advertising Awards and RGD Ontario Student awards.

You can follow Michael on Twitter @michaeljoliver.

Craig Swann

CRASH!MEDIA
CEO, Founder

Craig Swann is founder of the award-winning interactive agency CRASH!MEDIA. Focused on merging fresh ideas with cutting edge technologies, CRASH! has produced Flash work for notable brands such as Coca-Cola, Intel, Miller Brewing, Bacardi, Calvin Klein, CBC, and Cadillac. An interactive audio specialist, Craig developed one of the web's premier online interactive music mixers, looplabs.com. He has been part of the global Flash community since its early days, and contributed to six Flash titles including the recently published FlashMX2004 Demystified. He also spent several years as an instructor at several local Interactive design colleges, and is a prominent speaker around the world on the subject of Flash interactivity.