Dan Fill is the president and co-founder of Dark Slope Studios - a metaverse and virtual production company that specializes in games and television production.

In this role Dan spearheads the development of innovative projects ranging from fully immersive theme park rides and spectacles, to cutting edge television programs that combine world class animation, motion tracking and a real time game engine pipeline. Dark Slope develops original intellectual properties as well as service production. Recent partners clients include: NBC Peacock, Nickelodeon, WildBrain, Insight Productions, AT&T, TVOntario, eOne’s Secret Location, Zero Latency, Hologate and Magic Leap.  

Prior to his current role, Dan was the head of multiplatform for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, where he was named the top Digital Innovator by The Australian for his role in commissioning the country’s most popular video streaming service (iView). iView now accounts for over 900 million streams a year in Australia. Previous to ABC, Dan was the former vice president interactive of Decode Entertainment (now WildBrain). In this role, he built an award-winning internal studio producing games and immersive experiences for a global audience.

Dan is a seasoned presenter having spoken at the Banff World Media Festival (Canada), MIPCOM ( France), XMedia Labs (Singapore), Xmedia Labs (Melbourne) and Xmedia (Sydney), Game Developers Conference (San Francisco and San Diego), Kidscreen (New York), Asia Animation Summit (Kuala Lumpur), Kidscreen (Miami) as well as TAAFI Animation Festival (Toronto).  

Dan is a co-founder of the production company Chocolate Liberation Front and a major shareholder of education and simulation company Lumeto. 

Grayden Laing is a St. Thomas based artist, animator, and filmmaker who has a passion for creating artwork that leads viewers to a more nuanced perception of the world around them. Grayden’s artwork is informed by the visual communication paradigms of social media as well as the iconoclastic works of early 20th century French artists.

In the broadcast world, Grayden has done work for the W Network, Travel + Escape, CHCH, Vision TV, Investigation Discovery, and the History Channel. He was the director of photography and colourist for the History TV series War Story: Afgahnistan, which won a Canadian Screen Award for the Best History Documentary Program or Series. When the pandemic hit, Grayden switched from filming for War Story to being the lead digital artist pioneering a technique to colourize black and white WWII footage for War Story: Fight to the Finish, which was nominated in 2021 for Best History Documentary Program or Series.

Grayden currently maintains an art studio in St. Thomas, ON, where he paints, teaches, works on film projects, and runs Establish Media.  

For over 20 years Joe Raasch has been the coordinator of Seneca College's visual effects program and a visual effects artist. He has made training for Foundry, organized several Nuke user group meetings, served on the board for TAAFI and the Toronto chapter of the Visual Effects Society and most recently completed the Unreal Fellowship for Virtual Production.

Shishir 'S' Pande (Bachelor of Engineering, McMaster University, 2014) is the CEO of EXAR Studios and has a background in business strategy, marketing, and engineering. He has a track record of innovation and community focus proven by his past entrepreneurial successes and achievement of the London Inc. Top 20 Under 40 Award in 2020.

EXAR Studios is a digital creative tech company whose mission is to develop extended reality (XR) technology that allows destinations all over the world to bring engaging cultural content to users on location. 

We deepen the experience of exploring the world by providing arts, history, and culture experiences to people who travel globally or locally. We work with local experts to create the most culturally authentic content we can while providing entertaining storytelling to the world.