[Mentor]

Founder: ION, Gracenote, Sceneplay & Hugging Company

Ann Greenberg is a serial entrepreneur, inventor and thought leader. Ann co-founded Gracenote, the leading entertainment data company in the world. Gracenote connects millions of people to the content they love and handles billions of data requests daily for leading consumer electronic, software and automotive devices (Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Samsung, LG, Amazon, Xbox, Roku, Tivo, Toshiba, Mercedes, BMW, Ford, Hyundai, Toyota.) Gracenote was acquired by Sony in 2008 and is now owned by Tribune Media.

At her new company, Sceneplay, Ann is building a cloud-based collaborative storytelling platform that takes the script format into the 21st century to virtualize and automate media creation, including for VR/MR/AR using avatars, robots, live action and 3D animation. Ann also runs the Hugging Company, an incubator for both blockchain and AR/VR technologies providing cutting edge solutions for diverse industries, including entertainment, real estate and healthcare.

Ann mentors Korean accelerator SparkLabs and she advises or mentors diverse startups, including Busby.io, Fem-Inc. (Prizma), MangoPlate, and Spherical, Inc. (TourWrist.) Ann designed the original immersive story-mapping concepts for a documentary about a tribe of Jews living in Ghana, West Africa and she produced hip-hop artist Blaqstarr’s SongPano (her concept for immersive album covers) for Interscope.

In 1992, Ann co-founded ION a pioneering digital studio to create “omnidirectional, interactive and immersive entertainment” which invented and patented early interactive cinema systems, enhanced CD formats and groundbreaking intelligent media players. ION partnered with BMG and published cutting edge work for artists including: David Bowie, Brian Eno, The Residents, Todd Rundgren and Primus. Clients included: Apple, Sony, Microsoft, Macromedia, Phillips, Interscope, Disney and House of Blues. Other projects included “Robecca a Digital Frankenstein” built from collective memory, “Digital Dante” and Ray Zone’s 3DWorld. Ann pioneered celebrity hosted chats and playlists, and worked on early Internet broadcasts for major brands.

Prior to founding ION, Ann headed marketing for Academy Award-winning Pressman Films.

Specialties: Entrepreneurship, Digital Media, Participatory Storytelling, Crowdsourcing and Collaborative Models, Immersion, VR, AR, MR, Entertainment Technology, Interactive Cinema, Metadata, Blockchain Technology, Spatial Computing, Computer Vision, Intellectual Property Development, Marketing and Business Development, Women in Technology, Innovation, Futurism. Public Speaking.

www.anngreenberg.com