MI6 Conference Gets New President, Showrunner

Promax/BDA, a global association of creative and strategic personnel in marketing, promotion and design, has announced that Jonathan Block-Verk will become its president in January 2008 and oversee the MI6 Game Marketing Conference as part of his duties. The next MI6 Conference will be held from April 8-9, 2008 at the Grand Hyatt Union Square in San Francisco, California. The MI6 conference has sparked lively debate from high-level marketing industry professionals in the past, as seen in this Gamasutra write up of a panel discussion that featured Microsoft and now EA's Peter Moore, EA's Bing Gordon and Ubisoft's Yves Guillemot. Moore himself, who acts as MI6 Chairman as well as President of EA Sports, was quoted as part of this statement commenting: "The MI6 Board is very happy to welcome Jonathan to the organization and believes he'll be a tremendous catalyst for building stronger relationships and greater interaction between the electronic games industry and Madison Avenue." Block-Verk comes to MI6 following a four-year stint as VP, group publisher and executive producer of events for Boards Magazine, a commercial production industry journal at Canada's Brunico Communications Ltd. According to the Promax/BDA press release, he headed up many successful new projects for Boards, as well as industry initiatives such as the creation of Boards U, the Creative Workshop series and the Advertising Women of Excellence events. "Electronic games and interactive media have unquestionably changed the media landscape, attracting the attention of the world's biggest brands," said Block-Verk. "I'm anxious for MI6 to help facilitate conversations between the gaming and advertising industries and help explore the fundamental dialogue about entertainment and marketing content in the digital age."