Tom Edwards
Principal Consultant, Englobe Inc.

As the founder and principal consultant of Englobe Inc. (http://www.englobe.com), a Seattle-based niche consultancy for geocultural content management, Tom Edwards is a unique hybrid of an academic geographer by training, global program manager and educator by experience and a geocultural advisor by choice, coexisting with a passion for technology and games. Formerly as Microsoft’s Senior Geopolitical Strategist in the Geopolitical Strategy team (a position and team he created and managed), Tom was responsible for protecting the company against political and cultural content errors across all products and locales. He implemented a “geopolitical quality review” process in the Microsoft Game Studios and was personally responsible for reviewing the potential sensitivities of nearly every 1st party PC and Xbox game between 1995 and 2005 (including the Halo series, Project Gotham Racing, Fable, et. al), as well as many 2nd and 3rd party titles.

Lecturer: Online Worlds and Offline Worldviews - Managing Geocultural Expectations in Game Content, Tuesday, 3:30 PM, Salon B