Pink Visual’s Allison Vivas to Speak at Mesh in Toronto

TORONTO—Adult entertainment studio Pink Visual announced today that its president, Allison Vivas, is scheduled to appear at the mesh2011 Web Conference in Toronto this week, joining a cast of high-profile entrepreneurs, academics and media professionals to address a variety of hot topics pertaining to the world of Cyberspace. Vivas will take part in the first panel discussion scheduled for the event, a discussion entitled “How Adult Entertainment is Reshaping the Internet – and Vice Versa.” The other two members of the panel will be Peter Nowak, an award winning journalist and author of the book Sex, Bombs and Burgers: How War, Porn and Fast Food Created Technology as We Know It, and Patchen Barss, a technology writer whose latest book, The Erotic Engine, delves into pornography’s influence on advances in mass communication and related technologies. “It’s a great honor to be invited to take part in mesh2011 and to appear alongside two prominent thinkers and great writers,” Vivas said. “I see my role on the panel as offering the ‘insider perspective’ on how the online adult entertainment industry works, its history and development, and to dispel myths and stereotypes that are commonly held by people who are on the outside of the industry looking in.” The two-day conference will address a broad range of compelling and weighty topics, from the role that social media has played in recent political uprisings in the Middle East, to an examination of copyright enforcement and online content piracy. Keynote speakers for the event include Mark Surman, the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, Emily Bell, the director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and Gabe Zichermann, the chair of the Gamification Summit and author of the book Game-Based Marketing. The mesh2011 conference is Vivas’ second speaking engagement at a major non-adult conference this year, following her appearance in March at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas. Vivas said that her participation in ‘mainstream’ conferences like SXSW and mesh2011 are “both a part of the company’s branding strategy and a result of that strategy’s ongoing success.” “In the last two years, we’ve made a real effort at Pink Visual to grow our profile outside of the adult entertainment industry and to serve as a good representative of the industry to the outside world,” Vivas said. “The fact that we’re being invited to participate in major mainstream conferences says to me that our efforts are being rewarded, and our strategy is having the desired impact.” For more information on mesh2011, visit www.meshconference.com.