Kevin Wall

Wall left home at 18, and moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he promoted concerts at the University of Michigan and other Midwest colleges. After he was asked to provide a portable stage for a George Harrison show, Wall founded a portable staging company, Stage One, Inc. Within several years, the company had become the largest of its kind, providing lighting, staging, and outdoor production for stadium and arena tours for The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and The Who, among other artists.

In 1984, Wall founded Radio Vision International, a company which "pioneered the business of international music video licensing." Convinced of the opportunity that increasing broadcast options would provide, he developed the idea for Radio Vision while attending an annual television conference in Cannes. His assessment was accurate, and Radio Vision was quickly profitable, distributing 60 music television programs internationally and building a library of more than 125 music and specialty programs. The company's financial success allowed Wall to work with non-profits, providing Radio Vision's services on a break-even basis for benefit concerts such as Live Aid, USA for Africa, the Human Rights Now! Tour, the 70th birthday tribute to South African activist Nelson Mandela and the annual Prince's Trust Rock Gala, sponsored by Britain's Prince Charles, to raise money for underprivileged children.[4]

In 1994 Wall established BoxTop, a web design company, which was merged with iXL, an Atlanta-based media and internet consulting company in 1997. As the vice chairman of iXL, Wall led the strategic acquisition and organization of 42 Internet design and consulting companies to build a venture with 3,000 employees, 38 offices and annual revenues of over $400 million.[5] iXL went public in 1999 and reached a market capitalization of $2 billion within one year.[6]

In 2005, Wall created Network LIVE, a joint venture with AEG, AOL, and XM Satellite Radio. Wall executive produced its inaugural production, Live 8, and designed its global media architecture. A series of benefit concerts to bring attention to poverty in Africa, Live 8 involved more than 250 musicians, including Madonna, U2, Destiny's Child, Jay-Z, and Pink Floyd, who performed within 24 hours of one another at concerts on 7 continents.[7] Utilizing both legacy and new media, the concert drew an estimated audience of two billion people,[8] with a live worldwide multi-feed webcast setting online viewership records. As the executive producer of Live 8, Wall won the first Emmy for content delivered via the internet;[9] it was later described as a "tipping point" and the "defining moment" in online content distribution.[10] In 2006, Wall acquired full control of Network LIVE and renamed it Control Room.[11]

Inspired by US Vice President Al Gore and his Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Wall co-created Live Earth, a global concert event designed to raise environmental awareness and combat climate change. On July 7, 2007, 150 musical acts, including The Police, Alicia Keys, Metallica, and Kanye West performed at eleven locations around the world in concerts that were broadcast globally through television, satellite and terrestrial radio, handheld devices, and the internet.[12] The event set a live-streaming record as 237,000 people watched video coverage from MSN simultaneously.[13] Live Earth reached an audience of nearly two billion people and set live streaming records, with 15 million streams initiated during the live event, and 100 million the following week.[14]

Initially envisioned as a one-off event, Live Earth became an advocacy organization which works with the corporate, non-governmental, entertainment and political influencers and organizations around the world.[15][16] [17]

As of 2015, Control Room had created, developed, distributed and/or produced more than 150 events, including the Green Inaugural Ball,[18] the FIFA World Cup Kick off Celebration in 2010, and Gucci’s Chime for Change concert.[19] The company has won 11 Telly Awards for excellence in categories including Education, Information, News, Social Issues, and Videography.[20]

In 2016, Wall invested in and co-founded Dreamscape Immersive, an entertainment and technology company, with Walter Parkes. Dreamscape Immersive creates story-based full-roam virtual reality experiences which allow as many as six people at once to explore a virtual 3D environment, seeing fully rendered avatars of one another. Wall serves as co-chairman of the company, which received nearly $40 million in investments from film studios AMC, IMAX, Steven Spielberg, and others.