Speakers 2027
The education opportunities at Cater+Event feature presentations from more than 100 industry luminaries who have been there, done that, and are armed with content that’s trendy, thought-provoking, and always influential.
Philippe Bergeron, President and CEO, PaintScaping, Inc.
Philippe Bergeron is a CGI pioneer, accomplished actor, entrepreneur—and, for fun, a self-proclaimed "magic landscaper." He is the President and CEO of PaintScaping, a global leader in 3D projection mapping. Bergeron holds both a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Montreal. In 1985, he co-directed the groundbreaking short film Tony de Peltrie, the first CGI character in history to express human emotion. The film closed SIGGRAPH '85, the world's leading CGI conference. Time magazine called it "a breakthrough... a digitized character with whom a human audience can identify." In 1986, Bergeron moved to Los Angeles and joined Symbolics, a spinoff of the MIT AI Lab and the premier AI platform of the 1980s. While he didn't work in AI directly, he specialized in 3D character animation using graphical tools built in Lisp—a language he fondly calls "the best AI language ever." Symbolics also holds the distinction of registering the world's first .com domain in 1985. As an actor, Bergeron has appeared in more than 50 films and television shows, including Iron Man 2, Mad Men, Rush Hour 3, E.R., Contact, The Family Man, and Godzilla (1998—the "good one-ish"). He also guest-starred on The Sopranos. Outside of tech and acting, Philippe created The Forest of Mirrors, a whimsical, infinity-themed garden located in the backyard of his family home—once owned by silent film legend Buster Keaton. The project was featured on HGTV and KNBC.