About Brett Atwood:

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Brett Atwood is an academic, marketing executive and content strategist with over two decades of senior management experience. He has served as an editorial lead and strategist at Amazon.com, Linden Lab and RealNetworks.

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Prior to his career in new media, he was a print and online journalist whose work appeared in Billboard, Rolling Stone, Vibe, Hollywood Reporter and other publications.

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During his five-year stint as new media editor at Billboard, he was among the first reporters to document the development of Internet-based digital downloading and streaming media technologies. His expertise in this area has resulted in numerous analyst and commentator appearances at several national print and TV outlets, including Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, CBS Evening News, USA Today and Wall Street Journal.

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Awards:

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In 2006, Atwood was the recipient of a U.S. Speaker and Specialist Grant from the U.S. Department of State. This grant enabled Atwood to travel to Minsk, Belarus to conduct workshops on Internet content development among independent journalists.

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In 2008, he received a multi-year grant from the McCormick Foundation to conduct a series of Virtual Journalism Summits featuring workshops and presentations about media within 3D spaces. Events have included a mixed reality Q&A with veteran journalists Bob Schieffer and Helen Thomas, as well as several workshops with leading technology and media executives (CNN, Disney, NPR, etc.).

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In 2010, Atwood founded and produced the Murrow Center 3D Newsroom on the virtual campus of WSU in Second Life. This interactive exhibit, developed with the help of a Specialized Reporting Institute grant from the McCormick Foundation, features learning kiosks aimed at training citizen journalists, as well as a virtual theater and exhibit dedicated to the life and legacy of legendary broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow.

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In 2011, he was a co-recipient of a U.S. Department of State grant for the Study of the United States Institute for Student Leaders on New Media in Journalism (SUSI).