A room full of monkeys and a loaded gun

Michel Besner has been successful for more than 15 years in bringing to market innovative products and solutions for the film, games development, video, broadcast, web, mobile messaging, and architectural market spaces. A leading visionary, Michel co-founded and was the President and CEO of Kaydara, developers of MotionBuilder, HumanIK Middleware and the FBX 3D interchange file format. MotionBuilder is a revolutionary real-time 3D animation software that has been used in movies such as The Matrix Trilogy, Lord of the Rings Trilogy and recently was an instrumental piece in the development of the virtual cinematography and motion capture used in Avatar. MotionBuilder was also used in AAA games such as EA Sports’ 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto IV, Epic Games Gears of War 2 and Ubisoft Assassin’s Creed.

Alias Systems acquired Kaydara in 2004 where Michel served as Vice-President of Business Development. Autodesk later acquired Alias in 2006 with Michel taking the responsibility of the 3D entertainment and design visualization portfolio (3ds Max, Maya, MotionBuilder, HumanIK, FBX). Afterwards, Michel moved into the mobile messaging market by joining OZ Communications as Senior Vice President Marketing. Nokia acquired OZ in November 2008.

Michel won several awards including Personality of the Year – 2003/2004 by the Québec Federation of IT (FIQ - Fédération de l’Informatique du Québec). Michel holds a bachelor degree in Computer Engineering from l’Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal and enjoys the good things in life such as collecting wine, playing golf and tennis as well as traveling. Michel is married and has 4 kids.