SATE is the Themed Entertainment Association’s signature creative conference dedicated to the art of Experience Design. SATE 2012 will be held at Disney’s Newport Bay Club® hotel, at Disneyland Paris Resort.
Click here to see the complete SATE 2012 conference program.
D. Mark Snell
Chief Experience Officer – KidZania
Mark has worked in the Entertainment, Marketing and Education Industries for over 28 years. He is currently the Chief Experience Officer for KidZania, creating, managing and improving role-playing, creative-learning experiences for children and their families in 11 global locations.
He began his college career in pre-med after doing relief work with dentists in his childhood home in Trinidad. This was perhaps the first “transformational experience” he encountered and he wanted to learn how to make that happen. Working through his pre-med courses, he felt himself constantly drawn to the theatre department. He was intrigued by the transformational power of an immersive experience, a well-told story, and he eventually changed his major to theatre, receiving a BFA and MFA in set design (eventually, his parents forgave him for switching from Pre-Med to Theatre).
He now works on a much broader scale than those early days in theatre, but he still strives for that same sense of wonder and immersion, a transformative experience for his audience. He sees his work as a unique way to make the world a better place, or better yet, to make people want to make the world a better place, to crave beauty and authenticity. Mark is a student of culture, theatre, architecture, music, art and design; of processes, of history, of why people do what they do, of technology and how things work. He uses his insight to create all aspects of a total experience that can be measured and improved, pre- during and post-visit.
Working in Theme Parks, Experiential Marketing, Education, Museums, Executive Briefing Centers, Trade Shows, Live Events, Location Based Entertainment, Product Launches, Corporate Meetings, Theatre and Visitor Centers, Mark has been privileged to help create transformational experiences for some of the most prestigious brands in the world. These include: Accenture, Anheuser Busch, The Boston Celtics, CNN, CVS, Dell, Dunkin Brands, Fox Studios, General Motors, Gillette, Hershey, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, JP Morgan, KidZania, LEGO, Liberty Mutual, Marriott, Medco Health Solutions, Merrill Lynch, Monster, Scholastic, Sea World, Six Flags, Sodexho, Sprint, Staples, Texas Instruments, Universal, Volkswagen, Volvo Trucks and Walt Disney.
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