International newcomers support devcom Team

Aruba Events, subsidiary of Computec Media Group, are pleased to announce that they have strengthen international support for devcom’s organization team with inclusion of Kate Edwards, Alessandra van Otterlo and John Gaudiosi, three experienced international experts in games.
After the team’s successful debut last year, the now expanded program team will contribute to an even more diverse and international program. Devcom will bring together the international developer scene’s “Who is Who” during gamescom week. Devcom is hosted in collaboration with game, the German game industry’s association, and Koelnmesse.

This year’s devcom will take place on Sunday 19th and Monday 20th August and therefore not overlap with gamescom’s business days.

Dirk Gooding and Simon Fistrich, Co-Heads at CMG Conferences and Aruba Events have assembled a powerful team for this year’s event.

Nico Balletta, editor in chief at Making Games, will act as program director and will develop the program for devcom 2018 together with Kate Edwards, Alessandra van Otterlo, John Gaudiosi and Frank Sliwka.

Until 2017, Edwards worked as executive director at the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) where she served for five years. She’s an experienced strategist who was listed as one of “the 10 Most Powerful Women in Gaming” by Fortune in 2013, and in 2014 Gamesindustry.biz included her in the video games industry “six people of the year”, which emphasizes her expertise. Together with John Gaudiosi, a journalist with over 20 years in the industry and Co-Founder at Shacknews.com, she’ll take care of renowned speakers from the Americas.

Alesandra van Otterlo has been part of the industry since 2004 and has an excellent network thanks to her work at Control Magazine and Control Conference in Europe. Frank Sliwka complements the program team with his network in Asia’s developer scene.

Stephan Reichart (head of devcom), Astrid Gooding (senior project manager), Veronika Maucher (head of speaker management) and Niels Eggert (senior sales manager) complete the team.

More details about schedule and tickets as well as the first confirmed speakers will be announced in the near future.