Daniel Dociu was born in Cluj, the capital of Transylvania, Romania. He studied art and architecture graduated in 1982 with a Masters Degree in Industrial Design from the Academy of Fine Arts in his home town. He worked as a product designer for several years before taking a teaching position for the same school. He moved to the US in 1990 after having worked for two years as a graphic designer in Athens, Greece. Between ’91-’93 he designed toys. Next he got involved with interactive entertainment and has been working as an Art Director in the video games industry ever since. Among the companies he worked for are Squaresoft, Zipper Interactive, Electronic Arts and Microsoft. For the past seven years he has been the Studio Art Director for Arenanet, where his primary responsibility is leading the art department in the development of the Guild Wars series. Since ’07 he has also taken on the role of Chief Art Director for NCsoft West. His work can be found at tinfoilgames. com

ICON 35 is pleased to announce that Susan Leabhart has agreed to be our Fan Guest of Honor. Along with her involvement with DAGOBAH, and contributing great programming to Icon and other area conventions, ICON 35 believes her presence would be a great addition for this year’s convention, particularly with steampunk-related programming.

Do you like Anime?
Do you like conventions?
Ever said to yourself, “how can I help?”

Well here’s your chance!

On Saturday March 20th at 4pm, stop on by the Coralville Marriott Hotel and Convention Center. AnimeIowa will holding a Staff Recruitment Drive.

Find out what the different departments handle!
Don’t want to run a department? That’s ok. Our trained staff can help to ease you into the convention circuit life one foot step at a time. Start out by joining a department and before you know it, you could be running the convention with the support of the Mindbridge Membership and the AnimeIowa Staff!

So come on down on March 20th at 4pm and see if you are the Otaku we are looking for!

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing, and a contributor to Wired, Popular Science, Make, the New York Times, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. In 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

His novels are published by Tor Books and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. He has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards. His latest novel, New York Times Bestseller Little Brother, was published in May 2008, and his latest short story collection is Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present. In 2008, Tachyon Books published a collection of his essays, called Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future (with an introduction by John Perry Barlow) and IDW published a collection of comic books inspired by his short fiction called Cory Doctorow’s Futuristic Tales Of The Here And Now. His next novel is Makers, due from Tor Books in October, 2009.

He co-founded the open source peer-to-peer software company OpenCola, sold to OpenText, Inc in 2003, and presently serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the MetaBrainz Foundation, Technorati, Inc, the Organization for Transformative Works, Areae, the Annenberg Center for the Study of Online Communities, and Onion Networks, Inc.

In 2007, Entertainment Weekly called him, “The William Gibson of his generation.” He was also named one of Forbes Magazine’s 2007 Web Celebrities, and one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders for 2007.

He is presently working on a new young adult novel, FOR THE WIN (about union organizing in video games).

On February 3, 2008, he became a father. The little girl is called Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow, and is a marvel that puts all the works of technology and artifice to shame.