management
Matthew Fannon, CEO:
Mr. Fannon has extensive business know-how, having managed and operated several different ventures. Mr. Fannon’s business background has provided him with valuable skills in business finance, real estate acquisition and disposition, strategic targeting, deal structuring, contract negotiation, marketing and sales. He has served on multiple boards and served in executive level positions throughout his career.
Mr. Fannon began his career in business working with an industry leader in an international industrial and commercial real estate firm named Binswanger. There he initially worked as an apprentice under the company’s most successful industrial broker, as a Marketing and Data Specialist, then went on to become the youngest licensed broker in the company. He was an integral team member in the acquisition / disposition of industrial real estate manufacturing and distribution properties for Fortune 500 corporations such as 3M, Gerber, Motorola, Lucent, and Wal-Mart.
Over the past ten years Mr. Fannon has been utilizing marketing expertise gained within major corporations in building small and midsize businesses both as a principal and/or employee and as a consultant. He has a track record of increasing company sales, branding, customer base, and web site traffic and a history of producing strong on and offline strategic partnerships through marketing campaigns and streamlining marketing processes to meet budgetary requirements.
Mr. Fannon founded Trancend, LLC in the late 1990s and was executive producer of a host of special events, indoor concerts, nightclub events, and large outdoor music festivals through the early 2000s. Most notably, Trancend produced and co-produced three outdoor “multi-cultural” art and music festivals in the South Eastern United States where he worked with multiple Grammy award winning musical performers, cirque performance artists, and internationally acclaimed traditional artists. Mr. Fannon oversaw all promotional and marketing of the events with successful combined attendance of over 100,000 patrons.
Ed Lantz, President and CTO:
Ed Lantz is a media and entertainment engineer, scientist, executive manager and entrepreneur. He is internationally recognized as a pioneer and leading authority in large-format digital cinema and immersive experiences for mass audiences. Other areas of interest include virtual reality, interactive place-based entertainment, real-time video/music performance, independent films with socially conscious themes, fine art visual music, neuroaesthetics, and wellness applications exploiting the psychophysical effects of interactive digital media.
Mr. Lantz has a background in hardware and software engineering, quantum physics and electromagnetics. He spent seven years leading photonic signal processing R&D at Harris Corp. in Melbourne, Florida, five years at the Astronaut Memorial Planetarium and Observatory in Cocoa, Florida leading the development of advanced laser, video and astronomical projectors, and eight years with Spitz, Inc. where he built a team that transformed old-style planetariums into immersive visualization environments and assisted in developing an immersive cinema production team and workflow. Mr. Lantz is founder and Chair of Harmony Channel, a broadband television network delivering mood-elevating digital media that has been described as “MTV for the Soul.” He also operates Visual Bandwidth, Inc., an immersive cinema and fulldome video advisory network.
Mr. Lantz has published and presented numerous papers on VR and entertainment technologies, and is a regular contributor to ACM SIGGRAPH papers, panels and courses. He founded the International Planetarium Society’s Fulldome Video Committee and the first Fulldome Standards Summit held in Valencia, Spain in 2004, and co-organized the first Immersive Cinema Workshop in Espinho, Portugal in 2005. He received an MS in Electrical Engineering from Tennessee Tech University (1984), serves on the boards of the Center for Visual Music and the Center for Conscious Creativity, and holds two US Patents on immersive video-based theater technology.
Peter Giambrone, Executive Vice President of Strategic Planning:
Peter Giambrone is a professional business developer with over thirty years of practice in the art and science of emerging and transformational media. He is both a successful entrepreneur and executive manager. The most recent fifteen years of his career have been committed to business development focusing on advanced visualization for total immersion, augmented and virtual reality media. Peter’s leadership and business acumen can be exemplified by a series of historical successes, including the initial public stock offering (IPO) of the Immersive Media Company (IMC), as the principal cofounder and CEO for that organization over a twelve-year period.
Mr. Giambrone’s experience includes success in both commercial consumer mass-market segments and select United States Federal Government national security/defense market channels. Currently, his business focus is set on meeting the increasing demands for advanced imaging, HCI methodologies with improved data analysis tools, utilizing existing and emerging visualization technologies for government national security applications, the global commercial entertainment industry and various commercial industrial applications.
Giambrone is motivated professionally by a conviction that ease of user interaction within simulated or augmented reality visual environments, such as the use of simple human gesture control of temporal, spatial and populating elements of the immersive environments, holds a great promise for evolutionary, transformational media, This will result in the creation of numerous, additional market opportunities in multiple industrial sectors, and a variety of business models.
Tom Bunch, Vice President of Sales and Business Development:
Tom Bunch has extensive experience in almost every area of the music and entertainment business.
Mr. Bunch started his career in the mid 1970s, managing record stores in Texas. His career quickly transitioned to owning and operating a video production company that specialized in filming, marketing and promoting music videos for broadcast and commercial release.
With the contacts, relationships and experience gained through retail and video production, Mr. Bunch opened TAB Concerts. From 1983-1997, TAB Concerts produced concerts and national tours and owned and operated clubs, theaters and ballrooms. TAB Concerts specialized in Texas and Louisiana, but also produced events across the Unites States. TAB events featured many of the finest entertainers in a wide range of styles and including The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Beastie Boys, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, Tool, Rage Against the Machine, Howie Mandel, Bill Engval, Jerry Jeff Walker and hundreds of other exceptional performers.
Mr. Bunch opened TAB Management in 1989 and managed The Butthole Surfers (Capitol Records), The Toadies (Interscope Records) and music producers Paul Leary, Richard Kaplan and Stuart Sullivan. TABs clients have over 30 gold, platinum and multi-platinum records to date.
In 2000, TAB shifted it focus to the corporate field, producing corporate events, consulting and overseeing business development for a wide range of companies in the entertainment field or companies wanting to expand into or invest in the entertainment business.
Mr. Bunch’s’ areas of expertise include entertainment marketing, facility/venue management, concert/event promotion and production, corporate sponsorships, corporate and private event production, talent buying, artist and producer management, music publishing, contracts and negotiations, music licenses for film, TV and video games, record label operations, business development and music distribution.
Laura Vattilana, Vice President of Finance:
Laura Vattilana has over 20 years experience in the combined fields of corporate administration and accounting, including Systems Administrator for Weingartner Enterprises, Accounting Manager at Madison Construction Company, and Controller for Bridgeview, Inc. She holds a degree in Accounting from Immaculata University. In addition to her accounting talents, Laura is an active environmentalist.
