Sydney, 14th February 2009

The Project Factory and Lean Forward merge, bringing two of Australia’s leading digital thinkers together to offer strategic consulting and bespoke development across all media platforms.

The Project Factory today announced its merger with the mobile, convergence and social media company, Lean Forward.

The merger means that the company now has two of the most respected senior executives in digital media at its helm. In November, Guy Gadney (former General Manager of Digital for PBL Media) joined the company as a principal director. With the new merger, Jennifer Wilson (from Lean Forward, ninemsn and HWW) will also join as principal director.

Jennifer Wilson said: “The Project Factory taps into the next generation of audiences with its work for media companies around the world. The merger gives us all a great foundation of experience, creativity and management skills on which to grow the company.”

Guy Gadney said: “The Project Factory is focused on seamless cross-platform production. Jennifer’s knowledge and energy about mobile and social media specifically complete the trifecta of skills that are needed to turn this company into a quite unique entity. We are now able to ’speak mobile’ as fluently as we speak online, games and virtual worlds.”

The merged company will retain the operating name of The Project Factory, with Lean Forward as the blog with a mission to get companies engaging with digital media as much as their audiences do.

Jennifer Wilson is one of Australia’s most recognised authorities on mobile services and co-chairs Australia’s Mobile Industry Group. With over twenty years experience in providing interactive consumer content across various devices, Jennifer has a passion to bring the content from the first and second screens (cinema and TV) into the digital age (third and fourth screens, internet and mobile) in a commercially successful manner. Jennifer recently co-authored ‘The Writer’s Guide to Making a Digital Living’ and has been commissioned to write a soon to be published white paper considering the issues faced by screen content producers in embracing digital ‘Getting in the Digital Frame, a screen content producer’s guide to the digital landscape’ . Jennifer has previously lectured in Convergent Media at the University of Western Sydney.

Guy Gadney is a digital native, working on compelling interactive consumer solutions since the early nineties. Prior to his role as General Manager of Digital for PBL Media, Guy was Director of Content Production for Telstra BigPond, overseeing the broadband and narrowband sites for AFL, V8 Supercars, GameArena, Music Downloads. He joined BigPond after leading and completing the delivery of the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) and Games channels for the launch of FOXTEL Digital. Hailing from the UK, Guy has produced projects for laserdisc, CD-ROM, internet, multiplayer games and interactive TV. His roles have included Head of Multimedia for Penguin Books UK and broadband and interactive TV production for BBC Worldwide. Guy produced the online massively multiplayer game Diaspora and developed 3D games engines for PC and Playstation. The Diaspora technology was used as a basis for a multiplayer quiz engine which was used by Sky, NME, Eurosport, Wisden, and a number of other movie, TV and sports websites.

About The Project Factory

The Project Factory is a specialist developer and provider of creative cross platform projects across web, mobile, interactive TV, virtual worlds and game environments.

Our work for feature films and television shows has created highly integrated campaigns using exclusively-shot video content, creating fictional characters online, leveraging existing online groups, optimizing SEO, building storylines and characters from the film into non-linear and interactive narratives.

The company was founded in Sydney in 2005, and has developed and implemented social media strategies, virtual worlds, and cross-platform brand extensions for major companies worldwide and in Australia including the ABC, Telstra and others. It is an accredited i-Phone developer and partner developer with the Vastpark virtual world. It is a member of the worldwide Web Analytics Association and AIMIA (Australian Interactive Media Association) of which Guy Gadney is current National President.