Ed Fries, former VP of Game Publishing at Microsoft, will speak right before Geek 'till Dawn at DePaul Center 11th floor, 5-7 PM.

Ed Fries was vice president of game publishing at Microsoft during much of the Xbox's lifecycle. He was a prime evangelist of the platform to game developers and had an important role in the acquisition of developers Bungie Studios, Ensemble Studios and Rare.

Fries left Microsoft in January 2004. He consulted with a startup company, FireAnt, that was later sold to Sony Online Entertainment. He was also involved with several start ups including AGEIA, which aims to bring the first 'physics accelerator' chip for games to market, and Emotiv Systems, a company building an EEG based game controller.

Fries is currently working on bringing his favorite game, World of Warcraft, to three-dimensional life with his startup company, Figure Prints. The company makes 3D models of a player's characters using a fleet of Z Corporation printers. Within the first 12 hours of his company going live, over 4,000 people had requested an order for a model. Fries explains in an interview that each model can take about 1 week to complete.