J. Eckert

A part time freelancer, handling BizDev & Partnerships for one of the world’s leading Anti-Cheat technology solution providers.

Freelance Production Management, Business Development, and general Operations consulting for early stage Game Industry and Tech startups, to help those new to this space better understand the unknown unknowns.

As a Director within the Xsolla Funding organization, an Advisor to both the Xsolla Accelerator Program itself as well as an Advisor and Mentor to the founders of game studios that participate in the Xsolla Accelerator as part of the program offerings, as well as host of Xsolla Funding’s Digital Rapid Rounds pitching events.

To quote a colleague: “Wrangler of cats, organizer of chaos, sharer of bad news, culture warrior, and mitigator of foot guns”. More precisely, I crafted and defined Chia’s Ecosystem team, leading strategy and execution from the ground up across Developer Relations, Corporate Communications, User Community & Support. Additionaly a contributor to our thought Leadership, handled our internal Events, and was an ardent champion (or thorn in the side, depending on your point of view) of our Corporate Culture. I was also a member of Chia’s executive leadership team, shaping company-wide strategy and plans on our path to IPO. Sadly, an unforseen banking collapse in 2023 cut the journey short for I and the majority of my colleages.

As the overused saying goes, a man of many hats (as is common in early stage startups). Oversaw the day to day operations of our offices throughout California, as well as Strategic Partnerships efforts, and various random minutiae to keep the gears turning for the company throughout our various US offices during the exciting and challenging times of scaling the company from 15 people to 100. No trivial task, as we had to navigate the era of COVID in real time, as I lead the charge in taking us from a 5 employee, in-person regional outpost, to a fully remote regional organizaiton of several dozen, without the luxury of the many-years of learning we now have to lean on. Looking back retrospectively, I would have advocated for the now far more common “Chief of Staff” title that was relatively unknown at those times to best reflect my efforts.

Managing the Developer Relations Team, handling public-facing aspects of Riot’s API for League of Legends and (at the time) unannounced future titles, as well as various other 3rd party partnerships. Our team drove community engagement with the API, fostered and maintained partnerships with third-party developers, and worked with the API development team to guide it’s further development with player-focus in mind. I often said to people “If it is external to Riot Games, and has direct impact on our players/game without being related to esports, then it’s somewhere on a spectrum of relevancy to my team(s).”

Production layer between EA Global Online and various game development teams throughout EA and its partners. Responsible for making sure that the online needs of a game team, everywhere from digital publishing to online multiplayer components, are met by EA Online to successfully provide the online experience desired at launch and post-ship.

Oversaw documentation for internal publishing guidelines for EA’s online platform, Origin. Also responsible for assisting with the digital publishing of various EA titles on the Origin platform.

Project Lead for select titles built by EA-Redwood Shores studios for Compliance and Certification approval. (Sims, Visceral studios, EA Partners, etc). I take great pride is my near-perfect 1st Pass success rate at the big 3, including the famously high bar set by Nintendo!

Managed IT systems and general Ops & DevOps for the EA Atlanta and later Rupture (EA SF) divisions, handling widows and linux systems, general networking, various server and DB applications, and project management and production coordination.

Held dual roles (as one does in a 12 person startup) as IT administrator/Ops manager, as well as community management for the development of Playlinc. Continued on under EA after our acquisition by them in October 2007

One of a team of Network Administrators for the WSVG events held around the world from 2005 to 2007. Specialized in putting together an enterprise class network for competitive gaming setupsand BYOC lans in only a matter of a few days for each event.

Support tech and systems testing/diagnostic specialist. Also specialized in Video hardware trouble shooting and benchmark testing.

Operations Programmer, office tech support and Systems Administrator for the Chicago regional office.

Customer Service rep, Tech Support, and Abuse Administrator for an industry leading webhost.