We are excited to announce that Claudio Baccigalupo (PhD student at IIIA-CSIC) and his thesis supervisor Prof. Enric Plaza (IIIA-CSIC) have been awarded the “Best Case-based Reasoning Application Paper” by the 7th International Conference on Case-based Reasoning (ICCBR’07) for their paper “A Case-Based Song Scheduler for Group Customised Radio“.

MyStrands is sponsoring Baccigalupo and Plaza’s research, focused on recommender systems within a musical context.

Their current project is about a novel Web radio architecture called Poolcasting in which they are implementing and combining several different techniques (CBR, Pattern Mining, Group Satisfaction).

Congratulations to Claudio and Enric, and also to the IIIA-Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, this is the 3rd time IIIA has received Best Paper in CBR in the last 5 years.

The Industry Committee of the ACM Recommender Systems 2007 has assembled two exciting industry panels for the Conference:

Friday October 19th: Where should we be investing most in research and practice to increase value of recommenders?

• Moderator: Todd Beaupre, Yahoo, Inc.
• Joaquin Delgado, CTO, Lending Club Corp.
• Jason Herskowitz, VP of Consumer Products, MyStrands
• Kartik Hosanagar, Assistant Professor, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania
• David Jennings, DJ Alchemi LLC
• Zac Johnson, Product Manager, All Media Guide, Inc.

Saturday October 20th: Appraisal of Recommender Systems

• Moderator: Kaushal Kurapati, Ask.com
• Delip Andra, CEO, Minekey, Inc.
• Jennifer Consalvo, Director of Personalization, AOL
• Greg Linden, CEO, Findory, Inc.
• Shail Patel, Platform Leader, Unilever Corporate Research
• Neel Sundaresan, Director, eBay Research Labs
• Tim Vogel, Chief Scientist, Aggregate Knowledge, Inc

As previously announced, Krishna Bharat, Principal Scientist at Google, will serve as Keynote Speaker for the Conference. For additional content and information, please visit the Conference Program. For last year’s Recommenders06 panels and speakers, please visit Recommenders06.com.

We are happy to announce that Jason Herskowitz has joined MyStrands as Vice President of Consumer Products.

Jason has spent the past 15 years engaged in virtually all links of the digital media value chain – from consumer services to consumer hardware to development tools to semiconductors.

His background includes extensive experience in product management, product marketing, brand marketing, strategy and market development. Most recently Jason served as the Director of Music Products at AOL – which included the AOL Music, AOL Radio, Music Now, Winamp and SHOUTcast properties.

It is a pleasure for us having Jason on board.

We are looking for fun, outgoing people, to be the face of partyStrands at clubs and bars near you.

The 2nd Edition of the New Faces of partyStrands contest will take place tomorrow Friday August 10th at Rock ‘N’ Rodeo in Eugene. Stay tuned for the winners!

Thanks to our great partners Taboo and Rock ‘N’ Rodeo, Sunsational Tanning Salon and 104.7 KDUK. More to come soon!

Find out who is who here.

MyStrands is extremely pleased to announce that long time industry fixtures, Gary Geller and Scott Lehr have joined the team.

Gary Geller joins as the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, while Scott Lehr joins as Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development. This duo, which has been working together for the last decade, has a sales and development history that is not only remarkable but an incredible asset for MyStrands to acquire.

Gary Geller

Scott Lehr

Gary joined Muze Inc., the leading provider of Media Information and Digital Services, as one of its first employees in 1992. Gary facilitated an increase in the company’s revenue base from the low-six figures to 10s of Millions in revenue. He was responsible for securing, developing and managing Muze’s major accounts including Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Tower Records, Best Buy, Trans World Entertainment, Yahoo!, Wal-Mart, Netflix and many others. As a Senior Vice President, Geller was instrumental in the development and expansion of the company from a simple data provider to a technology and service partner.

Scott spent the last 11 years with Muze Inc. In his most recent position as Vice President of Corporate Development, he created critical strategic relationships with Fox Interactive Media and Nielsen Business Media’s properties including Billboard and the Hollywood Reporter. He also played a key role in developing strategies for expanding the company’s business in Europe and Asia. As Vice President of Sales & Business Development at Muze, Scott helped develop business models and go-to-market strategies for the company’s media information licensing business and negotiated deals with global brands such as Apple, Microsoft, eBay, AOL, and Yahoo!

We have already seen that Gary and Scott bring a great deal of energy, drive and excitement along with them. We are very excited to welcome them to the MyStrands team and are looking forward to the growth and development they will inspire. It’s going to be a fun ride!

The MyStrands Team in Corvallis recently decided to shoot the Deschutes River for some class 3 and 4 rapids. Bring on the white water!

See all the photos here.