e-mergence

kyte.tv - Staying Single to be broadcast

2009-04-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

I've decided to broadcast Staying Single as part of my PhD - but to broadcast it in a wider and more focussed way that I did for my MA.

I've created Sophie's channel on kyte.tv and have broadcast a basic intro to Sophie. However I am planning to broadcast an episodic tv version of Staying Single - in a similar way to Sofia's Diary was on Bebo - over the next few months.

I'm still in pre-production phase on this however, and would be willing to take on any advice or hands-on experience that might help shape or move this project on.

Please feel free to contact me on singlesophieregan@yahoo.co.uk

Jeff Gomez' 8 defining characteristics of a transmedia produciton - 2007

2009-04-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

The Producers Guild of America blog reports on Jeff Gomez’s insights at the ‘Creating Blockbuster Worlds’ event in 2007:
The 8 defining characteristics of a transmedia production:

Content is originated by one or a very few visionaries
Cross-media rollout is planned early in the life of the franchise
Content is distributed to three or more media platforms
Content is unique, adheres to platform-specific strengths, and is not repurposed from one platform to the next
Content is based on a single vision for the story world
Concerted effort is made to avoid fractures and schisms
Effort is vertical across company, third parties and licensees
Rollout features audience participatory elements, including:
- Web portal
- Social networking
- Story-guided user-generated content

Examples of contemporary trans-media properties include: The Blair Witch Project, The Matrix, Hot Wheels: World Race / Acceleracers, Bionicle, Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering, James Cameron’s AVATAR, many Disney projects including High School Musical, Pirates of theCaribbean, Fairies, Hannah Montana.

Vid Lit

2009-04-27T13:25:00.001-07:00

I just found a VidLit of the MyBad book - VidLit have made some great mini video (literature) adaptations of books which cross the line between a TV 'short' and yet give something to promote the book too.

Definitely worth thinking about...

The Rosetta Project

2009-04-27T13:11:00.000-07:00

Fifty to ninety percent of the world's languages are predicted to disappear in the next century, many with little or no significant documentation.

The Rosetta Project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to build a publicly accessible digital library of human languages. Since becoming a National Science Digital Library collection in 2004, the Rosetta Archive has more than doubled its collection size, now serving nearly 100,000 pages of material documenting over 2,500 languages—the largest resource of its kind on the Net.

A major concern of our project is the drastic and accelerated loss of the world’s languages. Just as globalization threatens human cultural diversity, the languages of small, unique, localized human societies are at serious risk. In fact, linguists predict that we may lose as much as 90% of the world’s linguistic diversity within the next century. Language is both an embodiment of human culture, as well as the primary means of its maintenance and transmission. When languages are lost, the transmission of traditional culture is often abruptly severed meaning the loss of cultural diversity is tightly connected to loss of linguistic diversity. To stem the tide and help reverse this trend, we are working to promote human cultural and linguistic diversity, as well as to make sure that no language vanishes without a trace.

Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era

2009-04-22T00:42:00.000-07:00

Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era

INTERNET-AGE
WRITING SYLLABUS AND
COURSE OVERVIEW.

BY ROBERT LANHAM

- - - -

ENG 371WR:
Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era
M-W-F: 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
Instructor: Robert Lanham

Course Description

As print takes its place alongside smoke signals, cuneiform, and hollering, there has emerged a new literary age, one in which writers no longer need to feel encumbered by the paper cuts, reading, and excessive use of words traditionally associated with the writing trade. Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era focuses on the creation of short-form prose that is not intended to be reproduced on pulp fibers.

Instant messaging. Twittering. Facebook updates. These 21st-century literary genres are defining a new "Lost Generation" of minimalists who would much rather watch Lost on their iPhones than toil over long-winded articles and short stories. Students will acquire the tools needed to make their tweets glimmer with a complete lack of forethought, their Facebook updates ring with self-importance, and their blog entries shimmer with literary pithiness. All without the restraints of writing in complete sentences. w00t! w00t! Throughout the course, a further paring down of the Hemingway/Stein school of minimalism will be emphasized, limiting the superfluous use of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, gerunds, and other literary pitfalls.

Prerequisites

Students must have completed at least two of the following.

ENG: 232WR—Advanced Tweeting: The Elements of Droll
LIT: 223—Early-21st-Century Literature: 140 Characters or Less
ENG: 102—Staring Blankly at Handheld Devices While Others Are Talking
ENG: 301—Advanced Blog and Book Skimming
ENG: 231WR—Facebook Wall Alliteration and Assonance
LIT: 202—The Literary Merits of Lolcats
LIT: 209—Internet-Age Surrealistic Narcissism and Self-Absorption

Required Reading Materials

Literary works, including the online table of contents of the Huffington Post's Complete Guide to Blogging, will serve as models to be skimmed for thorough analysis. Also, Perez Hilton's Twitter feed.

SECTION 1:
LECTURE AND DISCUSSION

The Writing Is on the Wall:
Why Print/Reading Will Go the Way
of the Pictograph

Four weeks will be devoted to discussing the publishing industry and why―with the exception of wordless celebrity glossies―the print medium is, um, boring and, furthermore, totally dull.

Week 1:
Reading is stoopid

This fundamental truth may seem obvious to today's youth, but this wasn't always the case. Students will examine why former generations carried around heavy clumps of bound paper and why they chose to read instead of watching TV or playing Guitar Hero.

Week 2:
Printing words isn't good
for the environment

Students will evaluate why, as BuzzMachine founder Jeff Jarvis articulates, "Paper is where words go to die." Paper is also where rainforests go to die, which, needless to say, isn't good for the Hyla rhodopeplatree frog. Thus, while older generations wax nostalgic about curling up by the fireplace with a good book or the Sunday paper, students will be encouraged to remember The Lorax (the animated anti-logging-industry television special, not the book).

Week 3:
Curling up with
a good book/newspaper
is dangerous

Students will explore the dangers of curling up by fires with books and newspapers. That paper could catch fire should an ember unexpectedly pop out. And all that curling is not good for people's backs. Especially since most readers of books, magazines, and newspapers are elderly and are thus already more likely to suffer from back ailments.

Week 4:
The Kindle Question

Is Amazon's wireless reading device the Segway of handheld gadgets? Should it be smaller, come with headphones, and play MP3s instead of display book text? Students will discuss.

SECTION 2:
WRITING WORKSHOP

I Can Haz Writin Skillz?

This section of the course is a workshop where students will work to perfect their tweeting, blogging, and short-form writing skills.

Week 5:
Grammar and Technique

Navigating the ever-changing landscape of Internet slang and chatspeak is essential to creating effective tweets, instant messages, and text messages. Students will practice using emoticons to create powerful dialogue and to establish dramatic irony. They'll learn to gracefully integrate complex expressions into their IM writing, substituting the trite LOL ("laughing out loud") and "meh" (the written equivalent of a shrug) with more-advanced expressions like BOSMKL ("bending over smacking my knee laughing") and HFACTDEWARIUCSMNUWKIASLAMB ("holy flipping animal crackers, that doesn't even warrant a response; if you could see me now, you would know that I am shrugging like a mofu, biotch"). Students will be encouraged to nurture their craft, free of the restraints of punctuation, syntax, and grammar.

Week 6:
140 Characters or Less

Students will acquire the tools needed to make their tweets come alive with shallow wit. They'll learn how to construct Facebook status updates that glitter with irony, absurdity, and dramatic glibness. When tweeting, for instance, that "John is enjoying a buttery English muffin," why not add a link to an image of a muffin with butter oozing from its nooks and crannies? Or why not exaggerate a tad and say that there's bacon on that muffin, even if there's not? It's called poetic license when writers do it! Students will be encouraged to show honesty and vulnerability in their tweets: "Lydia is lounging about in her underwear at 401 Park Street apartment #2, feeling guilty about telling her boss that her uncle died but enjoying the day off." There's no such thing as oversharing when you're a writer.

Week 7:
Blogging

No postprint writing class would be complete without a comprehensive overview of blog writing. Students will work to make their blogging more vivid using the fundamentals of the craft, such as imagery, foreshadowing, symbolism, and viral paparazzi photos of celebrity nip slips. Students will practice posting viral YouTube videos with eye-catching headlines like "Check this out," "BOSMKL," and "Doesn't this CRAZY cat look like she's giving that ferret a high-five?" Students will learn time-saving tricks, like how to construct an 800-word blog entry in 30 seconds using a simple news article and copy-and-paste. And, as an exercise in the first-person narrative form, students will blog intimate details about their lives, their studies, and their sexual histories (with pictures), with the intent of being linked to by gossip sites and/or discovered by future employers.

SECTION 3:
LECTURE AND DISCUSSION

The Industry—Getting Published

Students will learn inside knowledge about the industry—getting published, getting paid, dealing with agents and editors—and assess why all the aforementioned are no longer applicable in the postprint, post-reading age.

Week 8:
New Rules

Students will analyze the publishing industry and learn how to be more innovative than the bards of yesteryear. They'll be asked to consider, for instance, Thomas Pynchon. How much more successful wouldGravity's Rainbow have been if it were two paragraphs long and posted on a blog beneath a picture of scantily clad coeds? And why not add a Google search box? Or what if Susan Sontag had friended 10 million people on Facebook and then published a shorter version of The Volcano Lover as a status update: "Susan thinks a volcano is a great metaphor for primal passion. Also, streak of my hair turning white—d'oh!"

Attendance: Unnecessary, but students should be signed onto IM and/or have their phones turned on.

Evaluation: Students will be graded on the RBBEAW* system, developed to assess and score students based on their own relative merit.

A+ = 100–90
A = 89–80
A- = 79–70
A-- = 69–60
A--- = 59–50
A---- = 49–0

Instructor: Robert Lanham, star of the vblog seriesWriter's Block: Embrace It—Stop Wasting Time and Live!

- - - -

* Raised by Boomers, Everyone's a Winner

MIPTV - Disney Interactive's Cindy Rose delivers eye-opening keynote

2009-04-12T02:58:00.000-07:00

Thought provoking facts from Disney Interactive, which makes me realise that one of the keys to the 'success' of writing for new platforms is to know HOW consumers will react to your work.

Multi-tasking teenagers, (as quoted by Cindy Rose) who are watching TV whilst on 5 websites and IM, are partially attentive to these 7 tasks simultaneously (aided by the 'clickability' factor) - but if they were playing an online role in a game or caught up by an 'experience' such as reading a traditional book they would be far more immersed and probably less likely to click away and multi-task... I am working on a piece now that will test which types of interactive entertainment consumers WANT to be immersed in, and which types they like to receive in 'bite-size-chunks'....

http://www.reedmidem.com/mipblog/index.php/2009/04/02/109-disney-interactive-s-cindy-rose-delivers-eye-opening-keynote

Television is just the tip of the entertainment iceberg for today’s consumers, Cindy Rose, senior vice-president and managing director of Disney Interactive Media Group, EMEA, said in her keynote on cross-platform gaming.

With a sequence of 10 slides and a battery of statistics, she depicted vividly a new world where multi-tasking and interactivity are essential for all ages. A survey of consumers aged 13 to 75 posted the question: Is your computer becoming more of an entertainment device than your TV? Among the millennials (ages 13-24) 80% answered yes; Gen Xers (25-41) 74%; baby boomers (42-60) 64%; and even among seniors it was 51%.

A poll of Disney consumers aged seven to 14 showed “they are typically on five websites at the same time while watching TV and instant messaging, all at the same time”.

On average, 80% own and use multiple gaming devices - for example 84% have a DS and a Wii. The typical day of a European child consists of gaming for breakfast, mobile phone before and after school, PC before dinner and family TV after. Rose said those trends caused her to look closely at her own children’s entertainment schedules.

Rose provided a quick tour of Disney’s 23 interactive sites, ranging from Tinkerbell through Pirates Of The Caribbean to the forthcoming World Of Cars.

At Club Penguin “an ad-free online playground”, boys’ favourite activities were games and parties, while girls opt to decorate their igloos and customise their penguins. That brand was already on multiple platforms and in merchandising, with the potential for theme parks and other earners. While the “Disney difference” was that her company had the scope and resources to do that, she told broadcasters: “You can no longer be satisfied serving up traditional linear TV shows.”

Siemens enable interactive tv

2009-04-10T07:30:00.001-07:00

http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/06/siemens-cose-service-to-enable-interactive-tv/

itsmy launches personal mobile broadcasting

2009-04-10T07:28:00.000-07:00

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/itsmy_launches_personal_mobile_broadcasting.php

I Had No Idea My Phone Could Do That - Hearst Mobile

2009-04-09T13:51:00.002-07:00

http://www.hearstmobile.com/

Multi Platform presentation from Mike Dicks

2009-04-09T13:51:00.001-07:00

Multi Platform For TV peeps

View more presentations from Mike Dicks.

The Late Fragment - interactive film

2009-03-04T03:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.latefragment.com/

About

Late Fragment is the first project conceived, through the CFC Media Lab’s Interactive Narrative Feature Program (INFP), which experiments with the creation, development, production, financing, marketing and distribution of interactive feature films. It has been produced by the CFC Media Lab in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada. It was written and directed by Daryl Cloran, Anita Doron and Mateo Guez.

About CFC

CFC celebrates 20 years of launching Canada’s most creative ideas and voices in film, television and new media to the world. As Canada’s largest institution for advanced training in film, television and new media, CFC proudly has more than 1000 alumni working in Canada and abroad. A leader in the rapidly changing entertainment landscape, CFC is committed to promoting and investing in Canada’s diverse talent and during this anniversary year will launch new programs that will continue to bring inspiring storytellers to the world.

About CFC Media Lab

CFC Media Lab provides a unique training, research and production think-tank environment for emerging new media artists, content developers and practitioners. CFC Media Lab has been experimenting with the interactive narrative form since 1997 and in the past ten years, have produced over 80 prototypes ranging from web-based interactive documentaries to “shuffle videos” – the creation of randomly generated movies on the i-Pod. For more information please visit: www.cfccreates.com

About the NFB

The National Film Board of Canada produces and distributes bold and distinctive social issue documentaries, auteur animation and innovative digital content that provide the world with a unique Canadian perspective. The recipient of its 70th Academy Award® nomination for Madame Tutli-Putli, directed by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, the NFB has garnered more Oscar® nominations than any production company or organization outside Hollywood. Since its founding in 1939, Canada’s public producer and distributor has won over 5000 awards, including 12 Oscars and more than 90 Genies. For more information about the NFB or to order films, go to www.nfb.ca or call 1-800-267-7710.

Twitter Book

2009-03-03T15:01:00.001-08:00

http://www.twittertitters.com/2009/03/how-twitter-built-a-book.html

How Twitter built a Book

Parlour Games

2009-03-03T09:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.seedsofknowledge.com/parlour-games.html

Victorian Parlour Games

By Tamera Bastiaans

Contrary to popular belief, Victorians did love games, indoors and out. Here are some Victorian Parlour Games as well as some modern parlor games that can be played indoors or out.

Lookabout

The host shows everyone a little knick-knack in the room. All the guests are to leave while the host hides it. When they return, everyone is to look for the item until they spot it. They are then to sit down. The last one to find it loses (or has to be "it"). It makes it a bit more difficult if guests continue to mill for a few seconds before they sit down.

You're Never Fully Dressed without a Smile

One person is selected to be "it." That person is the only one in the group who is allowed to smile. He or she can do anything they want to try and get someone to smile. If the person smiles, he or she becomes it. The person who never smiles is declared the winner.

Blindman's Bluff

One person is blindfolded, and all other guests scatter around the room. When the blindfoled person catches someone, they then have to tell who it is they have captured or the prisoner is then freed and the blindman must continue his/her pursuit until he/she can identify the person caught. The blindfold then changes hands.

Change Seats!

This is a variation on a Victorian game, but a warning to those attempting this one, clear the room of precious little decorations, it can get a little wild! All but one person sits in a chair. The person in the middle asks someone in the circle "Do you love your neighbor?" The person selected then has to state either "No." at which point the people in the chairs on each side of him/her have to change seats QUICKLY. If they aren't quick enough, the person in the middle may slip into one of the vacated seats, making the unseated neighbor it. The chosen person may instead answer, "Yes, I love my neighbor, except those who (fill in the blank....are wearing blue, or have brown hair, or play tennis, etc) Everyone who fits the description (ie is wearing blue for example) has to jump up and change seats, while the person in the middle tries to steal one. The person left standing has to ask another person if he/she loves his/her neighbor, beginning a new round.

Charades

This is a classic Victorian game with which most people are quite familiar.

Pass the Slipper

We used to play this at church when I was little. You take an object, the "slipper." Pick a person and put them in the center of the circle. They must close their eyes while the "slipper" is passed from person to person behind their backs. When the center person opens his/her eyes, the passing immediately stops and he/she must hazard a guess as to who holds the "slipper." If he/she is correct, they trade places. If wrong, the eyes are closed and the passing begins again.

Forfeits

We played a version of this when I was little as well. One person is chosen to leave the room. All the other guests must "forfeit" a special item that belongs to them. All of these items are placed in the center of the room and then the "auctioneer" is brought back in. He/she picks up an item and tries to describe it as one would an item about to be sold. In order not to forfeit the item, the owner must "fess-up" and do something amusing/embarrassing to win back the item (sing, dance, do an imitation, recitation, tell a clean joke, etc.)

The Name Game

Provide each guest with 10 small pieces of paper, and a pen or pencil. Ask them to write down the names of 10 famous people, leaders, movie stars, authors, sports figures, politicians, artists, inventors, scientists, etc. Encourage them not to make it too easy! Fold the papers, and put them into a hat, bowl, or basket. Seat guests in a large circle. Each round is limited to 30 seconds, so have a watch with a second hand available. Player One pulls out a name, and tries to get the person beside him/her to guess the name by giving clues, but never actually saying the name or what it starts with. Gestures are also no allowed. After the name is guessed, the clue giver can continue pulling names out of the hat until their time is up. The guesser gets to keep their pieces of paper, and the clue giver gets credit also. The bowl is the passed to the next person and the clue giver now becomes the guesser and there is a new clue giver. The bowl proceeds around the circle until everyone has guessed and everyone has given clues. The one with the most guesses correct wins.

Example: Name - Abraham Lincoln Clues: He lived in a log cabin. He was president during the Civil War. His wife's name was Mary Todd. He wore a stove pipe hat and had a beard. He was assasinated by John Wilkes Booth.

I'm Thinking of Something

One person picks something and commits it to memory (Mount Rushmore, the ocean, an item in the room). They do not tell what this item is but they say, for example, "I'm thinking of something large." The guests are then allowed to ask yes or no questions. "Is it a building?" "No" "Is it an animal" "No." "Is it a monument?" "Yes." "Is it in Europe?" "No" and so on until one person guesses the item correctly. If the person guesses incorrectly the game still ends and the wrong person must chose a new somtething. Players should never guess until they are completely sure they know the answer.

Alphabet Minute

Have everyone write a general topic of conversation down on a slip of paper, along with a letter of the alphabet. Pick two or three people at a time to play the game. Have them pick a topic out of a hat or basket. They then must start a conversation with one another regarding the topic. The catch is that they have to begin each sentence with a letter of the alphabet, beginning with the letter written in the slip of paper. They must follow the conversation through the alphabet, ending back with letter in which they started.

Example:

Topic: Shopping

Letter: H

Player 1 - "Hey, I have to go shopping, wanna come?"

Player 2 - "I'd love to, but I don't have much money"

Player 3 - "Just come anyway; it'll be fun!"

Player 1 - "Kim said she would meet us at the food court."

Player 2 - "Last time she was twenty minutes late!"

Player 3 - "Maybe she'll make it on time today." And so on until they arrive back at H to finish. You can either time them and cut them off at 60 seconds. The go on to another group and see who gets the farthest in 60 seconds, or you can let them finish the alphabet and see which group finishes their topic and alphabet in the fastest amount of time.

Dictionary

We used to play this with family friends when I was growing up. Each person needs paper and a pen or pencil. You need at least one dictionary to play this game. Each person uses the dictionary in turn to look up a word (hopefully one unknown to most people) and writes down the real definition (in simplified form) and then makes up two or three others. The word and the definitions are read to the rest of the players and each has to guess which deifinition they believe is the correct one. The player gets points for each person he/she fools. The dictionary makes as many arounds as you would like, and the player with the most points at the end wins. Example:

Somnambulist

a. a person who practices rituals

b. a person who likes to be alone

c. a person who sleep walks

d. a person who is solemn and serious

(answer is c)

Similes

Similes is a fun Victorian Parlour Game, and can actually be used in classrooms to teach similes. A simile is a figure of speech that compares to unlike things using like or as. One of the most famous come from Robert Burns, who wrote "My love is like a red, red rose." To play this game, you need a list of similes and a group of people. One person, we'll call him/her the "teacher," goes around the room and picks people. The "teacher" picks one person and begins a simile "Love is like a......" the player must finish the simile by stating...."rose." If the player finishes the simile incorrectly, the "teacher" thanks them but gives them the correct ending and moves on. The "teacher" should be fairly well versed in well-known similes so as to be able to accept variations or answers that are close (or even very creative!)

Click Here for a few well-known similes to print and and use for your party.

Name the Nursery Rhyme

How Well Do You Know Your Nursery Rhymes? Using a list of lines from nursery rhymes, do your best to guess the title (usually the first line) of the nursery rhyme.

Example: What! Lost your mittens? Answer: Three Little Kittens

Examples of parlor games include:

Younger children may not know where the term 'parlour games' comes from. You can explain to them that in Victorian times the late 1800's, before electricity and television, people spent their evenings playing games with friends and family. These games were usually played in a room called the parlour which is the equivalent to our family room.

Do You Love Your Neighbour?
Players- Five or more
Duration- A few minutes for each round
Equipment- Chairs, one less than the number of players

The chairs are lined up with all players sitting down except for one. The standing player asks one of the other players, 'Do you love you neighbour?' If he replies no, then the two players either side must quickly jump up and swap seats. He may reply yes, but must attach an exception. Eg 'Yes, except for those wearing blue jeans' or '...except for those with blonde hair.' Then all of those players must jump up and find a new chair.
Whatever the answer, while players are attempting to find a new seat the player who asked the question can try to sit down. Whoever is left standing asks another player, 'Do you love your neighbour?'

Hot Boiled Beans or Hot and Cold
Players- Three or more
Duration- A few minutes for each round
Equipment- An object that is easy to hide

One player is sent out of the room, while those remaining hide a small object such as a ball, pen or a watch. The player returns to the room as the others call, "Hot Boiled Beans and Bacon for supper, hurry up before it gets cold." The player attempts to find the missing object while everyone else calls out that her supper is getting "very cold", "freezing cold", "hot", "very hot", or "burning" in relation to how close or far she is from the hidden item. Once the item is found a new player is sent from the room and the object (or a new one) is hidden in a different location.

Lookabout
Players- Four or more
Duration- About 10 minutes for each round
Equipment- Any object that is easy to hide

Players are shown a little knick-knack -a teaspoon, pen, thimble, anything small- and are then asked to leave the room. A player remains in the room and hides the item. When they return, everyone is to look for the item until they spot it. They are then to sit down without saying anything. It is recommended to wander around for abit longer after finding the object so as not to reveal the hidden item to the other players.
The last one to find the object hides a new item for the next round.

Pass the Slipper
Players- Six or more
Duration- A few minutes for each round
Equipment- Traditionally a slipper, but any similarly sized object will do

Players form a circle, sitting on chairs or the floor with one person standing in the middle. They must close their eyes while the 'slipper' is passed from person to person behind their backs. When the center person opens her eyes, the passing immediately stops and she must hazard a guess as to who holds the 'slipper'. If the guess is correct, they trade places. If wrong, the eyes are closed and the passing begins again.

The Name Game
Players- Four or more, better with larger groups
Duration- A few minutes for each round
Equipment- Slips of paper, pencils, basket or hat

Provide each guest with 10 small pieces of paper, and a pen or pencil. Ask them to write down the names of 10 famous people- movie stars, authors, sports figures, politicians, artists, inventors, scientists, etc.
Fold the papers, and put them into a hat or basket. Seat guests in a large circle. Each round is limited to 30 seconds, so have a watch with a second hand available. The first player pulls out a name, and keeps giving clues to the person beside him, but never actually saying the name or what it starts with. Once the name has been guessed within the timeframe the guesser scores a point, as does the clue giver.
The hat is the passed to the next person and the clue giver now becomes the guesser and there is a new clue giver. The game continues around the circle until everyone has guessed and everyone has given clues. The one with the most guesses correct wins.

You're Never Fully Dressed without a Smile
One of the sillier parlour games, of which there were many. Parlour games often involved a person being required to perform silly actions in order to win the game.
Players- Four or more
Duration- A few minutes for each round
Equipment- None

One person is selected to be "it." That person is the only one in the group who is allowed to smile. He or she can do anything they want to try and get someone else to smile apart from touching them. If the person smiles, he or she becomes it. The person who never smiles is declared the winner.

Women And Gaming

2009-03-03T08:38:00.000-08:00

http://www.womengamers.com/

Wendy Despain, Writer/Designer/Consultant for Quantum Content

AUTHOR: Cat Wendt | PUBLISHED: Feb. 3, 2009 | COMMENTS (0)

PAGE: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of Santa this past holiday season, I managed to have a bit of a gaming epiphany. While lying on my parents’ couch, knee deep in my stocking stuffer copy of Fable II, it dawned on me that people actually sit down and write the games that eat up so much of my free time. They even get paid. It may seem obvious to some, but the concepts of “videogames” and “career” had not intermingled in my thoughts until late last year.

Lucky for me, Wendy Despain of Quantum Content was kind enough to grant me the honor of an interview. She offered insights into the craft of writing, shared her experiences in the industry, and revealed several tips for people hoping to work as game writers.

Wendy Despain, Writer/Designer/Consultant for Quantum Content

Wendy is a freelance multimedia writer and chair of the IGDA’s Game Writer’s Special Interest Group (SIG). She has written extensively for both television and video games, including in-character websites for Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, movie/media blogging for Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and dialogue writing for the BRATZ console game. Her most recent book, Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing, came out in May of 2008.

http://www.womeningames.com/

http://www.womeningamesinternational.org/

http://www.igda.org/women/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-9986327-17.html

July 9, 2008 8:31 AM PDT

Just stop it already: Women do play video games

by Don Reisinger

Over the past few weeks, I've heard from reputable news outlets that video games are made specifically for men and most women find little reason to play.

According to these neanderthals, games like MGS4 and GTAIV are designed for men, just like sports games are, driving simulators are, and most other titles are. And if titles are not made for men, they're made for children. All the while, women are left out in the cold.

But is that even close to true? I certainly don't think so, and to be quite honest, I think it's insulting to women to suggest such a thing. Just because most media outlets show men playing video games and the majority of people playing games are men, it doesn't mean women are left out, and you might be surprised to know that women really do play games and have a very real interest in the industry.

Even with that in mind, I don't see why it's so hard to accept. How have we come to a point where we denigrate the fact that women play video games and try desperately to paint it as a male-controlled industry? Evidently it stems from a total disregard for the facts, but maybe (just maybe) some people are opening their eyes for once.

According to the International Game Developers Association, women represent 40 percent of all gamers. And although the Entertainment Software Association pegs that number at about 38 percent, it found that the average female gamer plays games 7.4 hours per week.

With that in mind, how is it possible that women represent just 12 percent of the video game industry? Ostensibly, it's not for lack of interest--the numbers speak for themselves--so it must be something else. Unfortunately, it seems those same stereotypes may be to blame.

According to CNN, "More than 60 percent of female students enrolled in game design programs at The Art Institutes said they believed male dominance in the industry is a deterrent to women pursuing a career in gaming, according to a survey commissioned by SOE."

And therein lies the rub. Instead of inviting the fact that more women are getting into the gaming industry, the same old stereotype is ruling all else.

It's time we wake up and realize that women really do enjoy video games. It's not fair to simply say that because most developers are men and video game critics are overwhelmingly male, women aren't members of the gaming community. In reality, it's quite the opposite.

Some like to say that women only play games like Wii Fit, but the reality of the situation is quite different.

As Torrie Dorrell, senior vice president of global sales and marketing for Sony Online Entertainment, explained to CNN: "Women are out there in significant numbers playing MMOs, action games, first-person shooters. What is lacking in the equation are women behind these games."

So where do we go from here? Certainly we can't simply sit back and accept the fact that stereotypes exist in the video game industry and women are being forgotten. Instead, we need to finally pull our heads out of the sand and welcome the fact that women are very much a part of the video game industry and should play an even greater role in its development going forward.

So next time you hear someone say that women don't play video games or listen to some uninformed loon try to tell you that the video game industry is for men, make them realize that women play video games, too. And just in case they don't believe you, have them log on to Halo 3--I'm sure a woman would be more than happy to frag them into oblivion.

Want to know what Don is up to? Follow him on Twitter, identi.ca, and FriendFeed.

http://www.greatwomenofgaming.com/

http://www.station.sony.com/girl/

SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT ISSUES INDUSTRY-WIDE CALL TO ACTION TO EXPAND G.I.R.L. SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM

SAN DIEGO, Calif. – Nov. 13, 2008 – Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), a global leader in online gaming, invited all companies doing business in the video game industry to join SOE's efforts to educate and recruit more women into the field of video game creation, design and production.

In a lunchtime keynote speech during the International Game Developers Association conference in San Francisco, Torrie Dorrell, senior vice president of Global Sales and Marketing for SOE, challenged companies in the video game industry to each make a $10,000 donation toward the G.I.R.L. – Gamers In Real Life – scholarship, with the goal of creating multiple scholarships and more opportunities for women.

"Today, I am challenging everyone to take action to help level the playing field for women pursuing a career in video games. By donating to the G.I.R.L. scholarship, we can encourage diversity in development and make a difference, hopefully creating more opportunities for women and ultimately making more video games women will want to play," said Dorrell.

First awarded in 2008, the G.I.R.L. scholarship was created by SOE and encourages female students toward career paths in the creative and applied arts, with the ultimate goal of developing video games that are more interesting for women to play. In 2009, the program will be managed by Scholarship America®, a leading non-profit educational support program. SOE will offer students of undergraduate programs related to video games a chance to compete for the scholarship by submitting original artwork and essays to a panel of judges.

Old English words

2009-02-24T15:30:00.001-08:00

http://www.ibequeaththee.com/oldenglish.html

Mediascape experience

2009-02-24T15:28:00.001-08:00

http://www.mscapers.com

Discover the unexpected – games, guides, stories triggered by your GPS location.

Interact with the world in a whole new way. Experience sounds and images linked to the landscape. Discover a rush of info as you turn a corner, a challenge awaiting you on your arrival. Imagine the games you can build, the stories you can tell. It's just the beginning. More…

Get Started

Got a GPS device? It's not just for directions — not anymore. Transform it with Mscape. Download the software you need to play — and build — mediascapes. Then get out there and see for yourself.

Download Mscape Suite Version 2.1 | 10.5 MB

Make a Mediascape

It's easy. You don't have to start from scratch. We're all about sharing. Adapt mediascapes you like. Borrow parts to build your own. Upload yours to show what you've done. More…

Slang Research & the Slang & New Language Archive

2009-02-24T15:02:00.000-08:00

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/depts/elc/resources/slangresearch.html

Tony Thorne, former Head of the Language Centre at King's and now consultant, is engaged in ongoing research into contemporary slang, the language of subcultures, particularly of adolescents - schoolkids and students - and other varieties of new language including business jargon, media catchphrases and ‘lifestyle’ terms. He has written, broadcast and lectured on these topics extensively in the UK and worldwide, most recently commenting on swearing on BBC television and on racist language and the misuse of language by politicians and celebrities, on BBC radio. He previously wrote the Last Word column in the Sunday Express newspaper and currently contributes the Bizwords column to British Airway's Business Life magazine.

Tony is the compiler of the bestselling Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, and Fads, Fashions & Cults, the Dictionary of Popular Culture, both published in London by Bloomsbury Publishing. The Slang Dictionary is published in the USA by Pantheon Books, and local editions are on sale in Singapore, Japan, Russia, India and China. A completely new paperback edition of the Dictionary was published by A& C Black in January 2007. Tony Thorne’s Shoot the Puppy was published by Penguin UK in November 2007. The book is a scholarly yet entertaining compendium of the latest jargon, buzzwords and new usages recorded since 2000.

The English Language Centre at King's College is home to the Archive of Slang and New Language, a collection of printed materials (articles, academic studies, publications and authentic sources from the 17th century to the present) and a database of Contemporary English-language Slang from across the 'Anglosphere', as well as jargon, buzzwords and other examples of new English.

Slang and Teen Vernacular

2009-02-24T15:00:00.000-08:00

http://notesfromtheslushpile.co.uk/2006/04/ya-voice-slang-and-teen-vernacular.html

Scott Westerfeld likes the idea of language so much that, as a child, he learned Braille, the tactile code used by blind people, as well as Esperanto, the artificial language based as far as possible on words common to all the European languages.

Language is the reason why Scott writes young adult (YA) novels. “When you are a teenager you are still in the act of acquiring language ,” he says. “One of the reasons I really like YA is that teenagers are more interested in voice than adults.”

Teenagers, he says, write more poetry per capita. They play more word games. They memorise more song lyrics. They like to spell things creatively. And a high percentage are in fact learning a language in school.

Slang is necessary to capture the teenage voice – in the teen domain, slang is often a factor that determines acceptance or exclusion, “you talk like me, you are like me”.

Slang as euphemism can turn embarrassment into amusement – why mention sex when you can describe two people “banging boots”? And admitting to playing “tonsil hockey” doesn’t sound as gross as saying you “tongue kissed” someone. Slang can define the previously undefined – a chubby girl wearing a midriff exposes her “muffin roll”.

“Teens are saying: I care about language, I am having fun with language; (slang) is pure emphasis on the joy and expansiveness of language. And that’s a perfectly good reason for slang.”

But YA writers beware. Today’s slang can be tomorrow’s embarrassment.

“Slang is like a fish,” Scott says. “Good when its fresh or when its old, a fossil. But in between is a nasty period, something you don’t want at all. I would never use anything from this year’s slang dictionary, your writing will be passé before it goes into print. Don’t listen to your teenager and reproduce what they say – and don’t try to talk like them either, that’s the worst mistake in the world.”

But slang is necessary to YA literature. “One of the most important things you need to know is that YA is voice and a voice is good when you get the feeling of being inside a world and being inside someone’s head. When you are a kid, there is less caution about verbal hygiene than in adult literature.”

What the YA author must do is generate his or her own slang – “Slang from 20 minutes in the future from the next town over; slang that’s a little bit off but hangs together.”

How to Generate Slang

Use the classics – “cool” and “lame”, believe it or not, have become classics, they’ve been around for so long. “You cannot go wrong if you use the classics,” says Scott.

Steal it from really far away. For a book set 300 years in the future, Scott used slang from 1920s Evelyn Waugh to create “future slang”. “Bogus” began life in the 1700s to refer to counterfeit coins before Waugh used it to mean “no good”, a meaning that persists to this century which Scott used to good effect through the mouths of his teenagers of the future.

Make it up yourself. In his Uglies trilogy (Uglies, Pretties, Specials), Scott describes a future world where everyone has to have an operation when they turn sixteen to become supermodel beautiful. Everybody is beautiful therefore everybody is equal. Except of course for the Uglies, a bunch of radical teens who want to keep their own faces. In the series, a “new surge” is someone who’s just had the operation. If you “surge”, you’re getting something fixed.

How to Make It Stick

Allan Metcalf wrote Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success, chronicling the origins of a fascinating list of words and phrases. In the process he developed the FUDGE factor – a way to measure the potential success of a word. Scott subverts the FUDGE paradigm into a means for authors to create convincing slang for YA readers.

F stands for Frequency of use. “You have to use something more than once. Use it in context and then define it three paragraphs later.”

U is for unobtrusiveness. “It might look familiar, but it doesn’t stand out. It’s so unobtrusive that when you see it the Microsoft spell checker in the brain takes less time to reload.”

D is for diversity of use and situations. And G is for Generate other forms and meanings. “Don’t just use something one way, use it as a verb or noun. Meanings will start to support each other in the text. That’s the way language works.” Eg. “Did you surge last week?” “He was a new surge.” “Surgeless” “Resurgent”.

E is for the endurance of the concept. Can you make it stick? At the end of the day, says Scott, “Slang is like reading Shakespeare – you eventually figure out what they are saying.”

Slang Mechanisms

Just substituting words for words will not convince your reader. “More interesting is to produce slang out of familiar language.”

Retronyms are “words you didn’t have to say, but you have to say now.” You didn’t have to say acoustic guitar in the 1920s because all guitars were acoustic. You didn’t have to say broadcast TV, optical telescopes, pocket watch, biological parent, heterosexual parent, first wife, World War I – “all these imply huge change”.

So if your story is set in the future, and a character complains, “Dad was late picking me up in the ground car” implies that cars can fly. It creates a feeling of anticipation in the reader. What should one expect?

“A retronym can indicate a lot about the character. You learn a whole bunch of things about how that character moves … ‘I don’t know, she wants to hang out with me in meetspace’ indicates that we are not in cyberspace. The character is someone who hangs out a lot online.”

You can divine rules in slang just by trawling through synonyms in a dictionary. Notice for example how certain suffixes – eg. head – are associated with stupidity. Bakehead, ballooonhead, chucklehead. There is also a preponderence of food – bananahead, chowderhead, melonhead, cabbage head. This frees you to create your own: nappyhead, turniphead. The suffix –oid indicates something geeky, scientific – mathoid, cretinoid, humanoid. Then there’s –land as in Disneyland or Wonderland – ditherland, slumberland, wankerland. Fake high culture can be evoked by du jour – boy du jour, pain du jour, failure du jour.

Ungrammar and backformations can fill an idiom dictionary:

“It wasn’t much fun?” “No, it was much fun.”

“How much fun is this?” “Lots of much.”

Teenagers are often uncomfortable with things which is why they like generating euphemisms – an “unboyfriend” could be someone you hang out with but don’t have sex with; or maybe someone you have sex with but don’t hang out with.

“Build yourself a grid of the prefixes and the suffixes and you will end up with something you like,” Scott says. “You are gaining your reader’s trust – something that doesn’t happen when you are using your reader’s slang because you look like you are trying too hard. Make it up as you go along – if you make it up it will never go out of date”

Scott Westerfeld was speaking on ‘Slanguage: Teen Voices and Teen Vernaculars’ at the SCBWI Before Bologna Conference in Bologna, Italy on 25 March 2006

Digital Exhibitors at London Book Fair 2009

2009-02-05T10:24:00.000-08:00

THREE digital exhibitors at London Book Fair 2009...

http://www.lexcycle.com/

Stanza: a Revolution in Reading

What is Stanza?

Stanza is a free application for your iPhone and iPod Touch. Use it to download from a vast selection of over 100,000 books and periodicals, and read them right on your phone. It’s a wireless electronic library that stays open 24/7.

Reading revolutionized.

Forget carrying around stacks of books for school, work, or vacation. Stanza on your iPhone or iPod lets you hold a lifetime’s worth of reading in your pocket or handbag. Whether on a plane or waiting in line, your books are only a tap away.

Browse.

The built-in Lexcycle Online Catalog contains links to over 100,000 books, from classics to contemporary works. From Austen to Zola, the world’s greatest literature is all at your fingertips.

Share.

Have an existing collection of electronic books? Have documents you want to view on your iPhone? Move them onto Stanza iPhone/iPod by using the free Stanza Desktop application for Mac & PC.

Read.

Font sizes and colors, portrait mode or landscape, justification, line spacing, and hyphenation. It’s all under your control. Customize Stanza with your preferred style and enjoy distraction-free reading.

A million readers can’t be wrong.

Stanza is the most popular electronic book reader for a reason. Intuitive ease of use, unmatched customizability, and powerful library organization features all blend together to make finding, obtaining, and reading your books a joy.

Browse Online Catalog.

Browse from many online sources of books, and pick from over 100,000 books to download.

Flowing Covers.

Browse your library in glorious color with cover flow to bring the realism of a bookshelf to your fingertips.

Worth 1,000 Words.

Don’t like your book’s cover? Looking up other cover artwork is a breeze using the “Cover Lookup” feature.

Book Summaries.

Find out about the book before you download and read it.

Read Away!

Print-quality resolution, soft backlighting for nighttime reading, intuitive screen taps to turn pages. Immerse yourself in your book.

Find your Favorites.

Browse by subject, language, and author, or perform free-form searches for books.

Organize your Library.

Sort by title or author, or create custom collections to create reading lists and keep track of all your books.

Save your Place.

Stanza always remembers where you last left off in the book, and also lets you bookmark your favorite parts.

Your Words, Your Way.

Customize your colors, fonts, and every detail from line spacing to hyphenation.

Quick Tour: Stanza in Action

Watch a quick 10-minute introduction to using Lexcycle Stanza.

Shop Online.

Use the built-in store to buy the latest bestsellers and download them straight to your iPhone or iPod.

World-Wise.

Stanza has built-in support for English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Danish, Portuguese, and Swedish.

Share Local, Read Global.

Automatically find books and other documents you share with Stanza Desktop over your local WiFi Network.

…

http://www.atypon.com/

Innovations in Electronic Publishing

Welcome to Atypon Systems, Inc.

Since 1996, Atypon Systems, Inc. has provided software, hosting, and systems development to the information industry, allowing content providers to grow their business by providing superior technology and service that supports the electronic exchange of information. Learn more about our company »

Atypon Systems, Inc. has acquired the eMeta business unit from Macrovision Solutions Corporation.

MIT Press is powered by Atypon Premium

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Simon Games - Games are the new cinema

2009-01-25T15:39:00.000-08:00

http://www.simongames.co.uk/

Games are the new cinema, they are breaking free from the console and hitting the streets. These games are a new way of exploring ideas, meeting people and having fun. Hugely social, they are a new entertainment form.

Fresh from a summer of running games at festivals in New York and London we've launched a new game production company Simon to deliver these new games for corporate and entertainment clients.

Simon games come in all sorts of flavours: some use technology, some are refreshingly lo-fi but all involve players competing and collaborating out in the world: on the streets, in (car) parks and down the pub.

Our new website is on the way. Meanwhile, feel free to call or drop us a line if you want to chat about how games can help your business or organisation.

Interesting Games Lab

2009-01-25T15:37:00.000-08:00

http://iglab.urbanantics.net/www/?p=88

City University NY - New Media Lab Projects

2009-01-25T15:30:00.001-08:00

http://www.newmedialab.cuny.edu/projects/

Current / Ongoing (roll over project name for description)

Earlier

collaborative play City University of New York

2009-01-25T15:26:00.000-08:00

Collaborative Play: Improving the World by Making Fun Stuff with Smart People

Rose White (City University of New York - Graduate Center / NYC Resistor )

4:10pm Wednesday, 03/11/2009

City Tech, Geek Life
Location: Gold Room

Several North American hackers were inspired by what they saw when they visited the Chaos Communications Camp and Congress, in Germany, in the summer and winter of 2007. Some of those hackers used design patterns, observed and written up by German hackers, to explain to their friends at home what they’d seen abroad.

Obstacles are no match for determined geeks: In the year or so since then, tight-knit communities have formed in Brooklyn, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Toronto, among people who didn’t start out knowing each other. We’ve rented spaces, bought expensive equipment, and taught classes. These groups have been visiting each other, to learn more and to socialize. The Austrian and German hackers who inspired the spaces here have kept in touch with us as well, expanding our sense of warm, welcoming geek community.

By covering the ongoing story of these spaces, I want to emphasize both how they are exceptional and how, if we are lucky and work hard, they can become a new social norm. A self-organized collaborative space does not have to be centered around “hacking,” of course. Any other shared passion could be the basis for such a group. What we’ve found in our hacker spaces is that smart, creative, engaged people have a lot of overlapping interests, and it’s wonderful to explore the world with a diverse group of people.

Whether we live in cities or in suburbs, societal pressure on most of us in North America is to live in individual family units, but many folks are finding that this model is no longer a good fit. In the suburbs, a tinkerer may have the space to collect tools and work on projects in a garage or workshop, but no other people to collaborate with. In the city, people may share big ideas, but can only get together in a coffee shop to discuss them. The success of the current hacker space movement provides a solution to both problems, one where we can behave collectively, rather than individually.

By building non-traditional communities in cities where it is notoriously difficult to build any community, hackers are demonstrating the future of social organization. It’s fun! While we secretly figure out how to make our lives in the city more functional and satisfying, we learn and share and make things. We play. Everyone can play. This talk is your invitation!

Rose White

City University of New York - Graduate Center / NYC Resistor

I’m a doctoral student in sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center, a member of the hacker space NYC Resistor, and a blogger for monochrom. Over the years I’ve been an English major (at Louisiana State University), a doctoral student in Renaissance Studies (at Yale), an administrative assistant, a yarn shop owner, and a freelance copy editor. My first computer was a TRS-80 with a cassette drive for storage, while my most recent is a Thinkpad T41 covered in stickers. My best language is English; maybe someday I’ll catch up in German. I used to write erotica but now I mostly just hang out with people who do.

http://en.oreilly.com/et2009/public/schedule/detail/5552

SenseNetworks - ETech 09

2009-01-25T15:25:00.000-08:00

Mobile Phones Reveal the Behavior of Places and People

Tony Jebara (Columbia University & Sense Networks)

2:00pm Wednesday, 03/11/2009

City Tech, Mobile and The Web
Location: Gold Room

Our mission at SenseNetworks is to index the real world using location data. By harnessing this rich, natural and anonymized data, unprecedented possibilities emerge for user modeling, marketing, advertising, recommendation, search and collaborative filtering. Using machine learning algorithms, we can infer the context of a place and the tribe of a user from just their location data. It turns out that the flow and movement of people through the city (who is where and at what time) defines places and their character. Similarly, a person’s movement trail through the city reveals their personality and tribe. With location data, we build a network of places (how similar is place A to place B) and a network of people (how similar is person X to person Y). These networks let us cluster places and people as well as compute next-generation demographics and analytics. As your cell phone learns about you, it helps you find people, places and things you are interested in and your phone’s mapping software becomes your personal social navigator.

Tony Jebara

Columbia University & Sense Networks

Tony Jebara is associate professor of computer science at Columbia University as well as chief scientist and co-founder at Sense Networks. His research intersects computer science and statistics to develop algorithms that learn from spatio-temporal data, networks, images and text. He has published over 50 scientific articles and is the author of the book Machine Learning: Discriminative and Generative (Springer). Jebara is the recipient of the Career award from the National Science Foundation and has also received awards for his papers from the International Conference on Machine Learning and from the Pattern Recognition Society. Jebara’s work has been featured on TV (ABC, BBC, New York One, TechTV) as well as in the popular press (New York Times, Slash Dot, Wired, Scientific American, Newsweek). He obtained his PhD in 2002 from MIT.

http://en.oreilly.com/et2009/public/schedule/detail/5450

Institute for the Future - The opposite of play isn't work. It's depression." - Brian Sutton Smith

2009-01-25T15:23:00.000-08:00

Superstruct: How to Invent the Future by Playing a Game

Jane McGonigal (Institute for the Future)

11:55am Wednesday, 03/11/2009

Geek Life, Mobile and The Web
Location: Imperial Ballroom

What are the five biggest problems will the world face in 2019 – and how can we get a head-start on solving them together? Find out in this talk, which presents the results of SUPERSTRUCT, the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game.

Produced by the Instititute for the Future, Superstruct is a crowd-sourcing experiment designed to create collaborative future scenarios and prototype solutions to future problems. For six weeks, more than 7000 players tackled the biggest “Superthreats” of the coming decade – from pandemics to climate refugees, network griefers to food chain instabilities – and contributed their best ideas for inventing the future of health, food, energy, security, and society.

Get a sneak preview of the institute’s official Superstruct Report, which presents the players’ top collective insights about the year 2019, and the crowd’s best tactics for superstructing society.

Jane McGonigal

Institute for the Future

Jane McGonigal takes play seriously. She is the director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California, and is currently writing a book about how games can save the real world (Reality is Broken, Penguin Press, 2010). She is also an award-wining game designer, best known for directing and designing alternate reality games such as The Lost Ring, World Without Oil, and Cruel 2 B Kind. She has a PhD. in performance studies from the University of California at Berkeley and blogs at www.avantgame.com.

physical interaction related to live performance and public space

2009-01-25T15:21:00.000-08:00

Tom Igoe

Interactive Telecommunications Program, NYU

Tom Igoe teaches courses in physical computing and networking, exploring ways to allow digital technologies to sense and respond to a wider range of human physical expression. Coming from a background in theatre, his work has centered on physical interaction related to live performance and public space. His current research focuses on ecologically sustainable practices in technology development. He is the author of two books, “Making Things Talk: Practical Methods for Connecting Physical Objects,” and with Dan O’Sullivan, “Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers,” which has been adopted by numerous digital art and design programs around the world. Projects include a series of networked banquet table centerpieces and musical instruments; an email clock; and a series of interactive dioramas, created in collaboration with M.R. Petit. He has consulted for The American Museum of the Moving Image, EAR Studio, Diller + Scofidio Architects, Eos Orchestra, and others. He is a contributor to MAKE magazine and a collaborator on the Arduino open source microcontroller project. He hopes someday to work with monkeys, as well.

http://en.oreilly.com/et2009/public/schedule/detail/5455

Digital Theatre

2009-01-17T12:35:00.000-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_theatre#.E2.80.9DLive.2C.E2.80.9D_digital_media.2C_interactivity.2C_and_narrative

”Live,” digital media, interactivity, and narrative

A brief clarification of these terms in relation to Digital theatre is in order. The significance of the terms “live” or “liveness” as they occur in theatre can not be over-emphasized, as it is set in opposition to digital in order to indicate the presence of both types of communication, human and computer created. Rather than considering the real-time or temporality of events, digital theatre concerns the interactions of people (audience and actors) sharing the same physical space (in at least one location, if multiple audiences exist). In the case of mass broadcast, it is essential that this sharing of public space occurs at the site of the primary artistic event.(6) The next necessary condition for creating digital theatre is the presence of digital media in the performance. Digital media is not defined through the presence of one type of technology hardware or software configuration, but by its characteristics of being flexible, mutable, easily adapted, and able to be processed in real-time. It is the ability to change not only sound and light, but also images, video, animation, and other content into triggered, manipulated, and reconstituted data which is relayed or transmitted in relation to other impulses which defines the essential nature of the digital format. Digital information has the quality of pure computational potential, which can be seen as parallel to the potential of human imagination.

The remaining characteristics of limited interactivity and narrative or spoken word are secondary and less distinct parameters. While interactivity can apply to both the interaction between humans and machines and between humans, digital theatre is primarily concerned with the levels of interactivity occurring between audience and performers (as it is facilitated through technology).(7) It is in this type of interactivity, similar to other types of heightened audience participation,(8) that the roles of message sender and receiver can dissolve to that of equal conversers, causing theatre to dissipate into conversation. The term “interactive” refers to any mutually or reciprocally active communication, whether it be a human-human or a human-machine communication.

The criteria of having narrative content through spoken language or text as part of the theatrical event is meant not to limit the range of what is already considered standard theatre (as there are examples in the works of Samuel Beckett in which the limits of verbal expression are tested), but to differentiate between that which is digital theatre and the currently more developed fields of digital dance9 and Art Technology.(10) This is necessary because of the mutability between art forms utilizing technology. It is also meant to suggest a wide range of works including dance theatre involving technology and spoken words such as Troika Ranch’s The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (Troika Ranch, 2000), to the creation of original text-based works online by performers like the Plain Text Players or collaborations such as Art Grid’s Interplay: Hallucinations, to pre-scripted works such as the classics (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest) staged with technology at the University of Kansas and the University of Georgia.

These criteria or limiting parameters are flexible enough to allow for a wide range of theatrical activities while refining the scope of events to those which most resemble the hybrid “live”/mediated form of theatre described as digital theatre. digital theatre is separated from the larger category of digital performance (as expressed in the overabundance of a variety of items including installations, dance concerts, Compact discs, robot fights and other events found in the Digital Performance Archive).

UK women's online behaviour

2009-01-16T14:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.ipcmedia.com/press/article.php?id=154626

IPC MEDIA DOWNLOADS UK WOMEN'S ONLINE BEHAVIOUR WITH ORIGIN PANEL 'WOMEN'S SPACE' RESEARCH

November 9, 2007

The majority of UK women are already highly proficient in their use of the Internet, with the average woman having been connected to the web for six and a half years, while 71% of UK women go online every day.

The findings come from Women's Space, the latest wave of research from IPC Media's ground-breaking Origin Panel – a major rolling programme of research using a unique 7,500-strong panel of UK women.

Women's Space, focusing on understanding UK women online, also highlights the average time spent on the Web – 105 minutes, with an average of nine sites visited per session. Meanwhile, mornings and late evenings are the key times to reach UK women online, while usage is prompted by both functional and emotional motivations – with the key online applications including social networking, dating and photo sharing.

The Origin Panel was launched in July, creating a major new rolling research study of UK women, designed to provide a continuous channel through which to understand the evolving attitudes and behaviour of women across the country. The Origin Panel provides a unique opportunity for on-going dialogue with a panel of over 7,500 nationally representative UK women.

Contrary to widely-held perceptions, the overwhelming majority of UK women believe they are knowledgeable about the Internet (67%), while 25% are early-adopting web-veterans. Only 8% of women classify themselves as online novices, with less than two years of surfing-experience.

Women's Space has also identified six core groups of women online, distinctive in their attitudes towards the Internet.

Miss Duress (18%)* – at the beginning of her internet journey, but keen to get to grips fast to keep up with the kids
Mrs Functional (14%)* – an experienced online user with a no-nonsense approach, gets what she needs when she needs it
Miss Fanatical (16%)* – does everything she can online, she's receptive to everything the web has to offer, including advertising
Mrs Positive (18%)* – considers herself knowledgeable and receptive, but always looking to improve her understanding of the net
Miss Easy Life (16%)* – an experienced online user, she's motivated by sites and applications that make her life easier, but she also loves to browse and research
Miss Relaxation (18%)* – serious about having fun, she uses the internet primarily as a source of leisure and entertainment.

* percentage of the UK female population

IPC Insight is the division of IPC Advertising responsible for spearheading consumer research across IPC Media – including the Origin Panel. Amanda Wigginton, group head of Insight, says: “What women are doing online is a hugely testing question for a vast array of brands. There simply hasn't been the data to illustrate how UK women use the web.

“Through the Origin Panel we have been able to comprehensively address that knowledge gap, examining the types of women online, the extent of their digital evolution, and the breadth of uses they find for the web. Contrary to many people's old-fashioned perceptions, online is very definitely Women's Space, and we will be working with this wealth of insight to help key clients and agencies to assess how best to target and engage their core audiences.”

The Origin Panel plans to conduct its Women's Space research on an annual basis, building over time a comprehensive vision of the online evolution of UK women.

Offline, IPC's peerless portfolio of women's magazines – including Marie Claire, In Style, woman&home, Essentials, Now, Look, Chat, Pick Me Up, Woman, Woman's Own and Woman's Weekly – reaches over 70% of UK women. And 2007 has seen IPC develop and launch a number of high profile new online brands for women including UK fashion and celebrity website www.instylemagazine.co.uk, definitive online homes portal www.housetohome.co.uk, essential web destination for UK women www.goodtoknow.co.uk.

- ENDS -

IPC Insight
IPC Insight is the division of IPC Advertising responsible for spearheading consumer research across IPC Media. It generates and co-ordinates a broad range of research initiatives and, as the authority on consumer behaviour across IPC's core markets and sectors, it works closely with key clients to ensure they develop more effective relationships with consumers and measures the effectiveness of their communications.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Chris Taylor, head of media relations, IPC Media on 020 7261 5276, 07980 221942 or email chris_taylor@ipcmedia.com

Back to index

AOP appoints head of Research & Insight

2009-01-16T14:35:00.000-08:00

http://www.ukaop.org.uk/cgi-bin/go.pl/news/article.html?uid=2222

AOP appoints Head of Research and Insight

16 Jan 2009

AOP has appointed Tim Cain as Head of Research and Insight, reporting to Liz Somerville, the Acting Director of AOP.

In this newly created role, Tim is tasked with setting AOP’s research agenda and driving a programme of research activity that will deliver valuable insight for the association’s members. Key priorities will include developing the association’s Annual Membership Survey, introducing new research initiatives that support members’ business objectives and producing regular industry benchmarking and analysis.

Liz Somerville, Acting Director of AOP said, “I’m thrilled that Tim, with his impressive experience in the research field, has joined the team. Research will be a vital part of AOP activity this year, seeing us deliver a full and varied programme to our membership.”

Tim Cain commented: “I am very excited about being part of the plans AOP has for driving the association ahead in the coming year - we’ve lots in the pipeline, given the real appetite among our membership for further industry insights.”

Tim has 15 years experience in originating, managing and applying consumer and customer research and insight within the consumer publishing industry working on both magazines and websites. He built his research career at EMAP, most recently as the Head of Research and Business Development at EMAP Consumer Specialist Media, where he helped reshape and redefine the research team of EMAP Automotive.

AOP - UK housewives world leaders for net use

2009-01-16T14:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.ukaop.org.uk/cgi-bin/go.pl/research/article.html?uid=2220

UK housewives world-leaders for 'net use

16 Jan 2009

UK housewives are the most prolific internet users in the world, according to a report by TNS Global, ‘Digital World, Digital Life’.

Spending 47% of their leisure time online, compared with a national average of 28%, the report says a key driver of this group's online activity is eCommerce, a market which is set to grow by 14% in 2009, according to eMarketer. With this in mind, AOP is hosting a forum on eCommerce and diversifying revenue on 29 January at Channel 4.

In December, a number of publishers expanded their eCommerce offerings, while in October, YouTube turned to eCommerce, experimenting as an Amazon and iTunes affiliate.

Meeting Friends Online

The TNS Research also showed that as many as six out of ten UK ‘net users have met with a friend made online, suggesting that the web is increasingly bridging on- and offline social groups.

“We are making more efficient use of our valuable time, specifically by using the internet - thereby allowing us to fit more into our lives… by spending productive time online, we are actually making more time for leisure" said Arno Hummerston, managing director of TNS Global Interactive.

‘Digital World, Digital Life’, conducted by international market research firm TNS, polled more than 27,500 people in 16 countries.

Source: Media Guardian

AOP - mobile web growing 8x faster than pc web

2009-01-16T14:32:00.001-08:00

http://www.ukaop.org.uk/cgi-bin/go.pl/research/article.html?uid=2181

Mobile web usage is growing eight times faster than PC-based web use according to the ‘Mobile Media View’ produced by Nielsen. The study highlights that almost 7.5 million Britons now access the internet through their mobile phones. As Kent Ferguson, Senior Analyst at Nielsen indicates: “the mobile internet is fast becoming a viable way for advertisers and publishers to reach important demographic groups.”

25% of mobile internet consumers are aged 15-24
Compared to 16% of PC-based consumers in this age group
23% of the PC-based Internet population is 55+
This demographic represents 12% of the mobile internet audience.

The most popular mobile sites, BBC Weather (21% mobile, 17% PC-based) Sky Sports (11% mobile, 8% PC-based) and Gmail (9% mobile, 7% PC-based) have greater reach on the mobile internet than they do on the PC-based internet.

Google Search, ranked as the most popular PC-based internet site, is overtaken by BBC News on mobile, which is visited by 24% of British mobile Internet consumers, or 1.7 million people.

Ferguson concludes, “It’s interesting to see that BBC Weather, Sky Sports and Gmail are amongst the few sites that have a greater reach on the mobile Internet than the PC-based Internet. This highlights the advantage of mobile when it comes to immediacy; people often need fast, instant access to weather or sports news and mobile can obviously satisfy this, wherever they are.”

Source: Nielsen Online

mediterranean mobilities is an international collective of researchers that takes the form of a networ

2009-01-13T04:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/medmobilities/

Home > Mediterranean Mobilities Home > Mediterranean Mobilities Home

A networking initiative in the Mediterranean

mediterranean mobilities is an international collective of researchers that takes the form of a network. By different entry points and through diverse perspectives and disciplines we want to capture and raise awareness of the transnational complexity of Mediterranean life and generate and disseminate cutting-edge, blue-sky thinking on the challenges facing the Mediterranean in the 21st centry. mediterranean mobilities has been created under the auspices of the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University, UK, where its co-ordination node currently resides. Read more»

Seminar series

Mediterranean Waters: interdisciplinary dialogue, urban infrastructures and sustainable futures. Read more»

14th November 2008.

News

Events and publications about mobilities and the Mediterranean. Updated daily.

Third World Congress on Middle Eastern Studies 2010. Read more»

Mobilities researchers

Find more about researchers with an interest in Mediterranean mobilities.

Other networking activities by Jiser Reflexiones Mediterraneas

Meeting of Young Researchers Around the Mediterranean

Recent events

Tourism Landscapes and Luxury Consumption in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.

11th and 12th September, 2008. Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster. Read more»

Cosmobilities Conference 2008. Read more»

New Cosmobilities book: Tracing Mobilities. Towards a Cosmopolitan Perspective. Weert Canzler, Vincent Kaufmann and Sven Kesselring

Dr Paul Coulton - Dept of communication systems - lancaster university

2009-01-13T04:01:00.000-08:00

http://www.dcs.lancs.ac.uk/pub/cgi-bin/personnel?id=16

Senior Lecturer
Postgraduate Director of Studies

Office:	B26
Address:	Department of Communications Systems, InfoLab21, South Drive, Lancaster University, Lancaster. LA1 4WA
Telephone:	internal: 10393 external: +44 1524 510393
Fax:	+44 1524 510493
Email:	p.coulton@lancaster.ac.uk
Personal homepage:	http://www.mobileradicals.com/

Personnel details as: vCard or LDIF.

Selected publications in HTML or bibtex formats.

Centre for mobilities research - cemore - lancaster university

2009-01-13T03:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/centres/cemore/

CeMoRe Home Page

The study of 'mobilities' is a newly emerging interdisciplinary field in which Lancaster University is developing particular strengths. The concept of 'mobilities' encompasses both the large-scale movements of people, objects, capital, and information across the world, as well as the more local processes of daily transportation, movement through public space, and the travel of material things within everyday life. Recent developments in transportation and communications infrastructures, along with new social and cultural practices of mobility, have elicited a number of new research initiatives for understanding the connections between these diverse mobilities.

Technological, social and cultural developments in public and private transportation, mobile communications, information storage and retrieval, surveillance systems and 'intelligent environments', are rapidly changing the nature of travel and of communications conducted at-a-distance. As mobile connectivity begins to occur in new ways across a wide range of cyber-devices and integrated places, so we need better theorization and research, especially to examine the interdependencies between changes in physical movement and in electronic communications, and especially in their increasing convergence.

These changes are having many effects. The human body is transformed, as it is enhanced by communication devices and likely to be 'on the move'. Changes also transform the nature of 'local' communities and of the commitments people may feel to the 'nation'. And the global order is increasingly criss-crossed by tourists, workers, terrorists, students, migrants, asylum-seekers, scientists/ scholars, family members, business people and so on. Such multiple and intersecting mobilities seem to produce a more 'networked' patterning of economic and social life.

Moreover, many public, private and not-for-profit organizations are seeking to understand, monitor and transform aspects of these multiple mobilities. These mobilities are centrally involved in reorganizing institutions, generating climate change, moving risks and illnesses across the globe, altering travel and tourism patterns, producing a more distant family life, transforming the social and educational life of young people, connecting distant people through 'weak ties' and so on.

Such new intersecting mobilities are centre-stage within contemporary economic, social and technological developments and in generating profound policy issues, especially in how a mobile life is sustainable into the long-term.

The Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster will:

bridge the various disciplines that are involved at Lancaster and especially to co-ordinate cross-faculty research networks
seek and develop new external funding and research student opportunities
consolidate a national and international reputation for Lancaster theory and research in this emergent area
contribute to deciphering the increasingly problematic nature of a mobile world, by producing new theories, research and policy instrument
develop positive links and connections with individuals, groups and centres elsewhere

This is an area of exceptional growth of academic and policy debate and interest, and Lancaster has already established a distinct market 'niche' combining leading social theory with grounded, policy-oriented empirical research.

IGDA - International Game Developers Association

2009-01-13T03:56:00.000-08:00

http://www.igda.org/join/

MAGIC 2009 (Animation, Games and Interaction)

2009-01-13T03:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.coetechweek.com/magic/

bbc writers room =- al smith

2009-01-12T13:29:00.000-08:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/insight/al_smith.shtml

You're currently working on an interactive drama for BBC Switch - how is that different to an ordinary drama?
It's great fun and unlike any drama I've worked on before. The idea behind the project is to give the first line and last line of every scene in a story, and then give the Switch audience the challenge of making their own version of each scene before sticking it online. I give them some guide-lines as to what has to happen per scene, and then they get to think up the most creative way to get from A to B, before uploading their scenes and editing them all together. You can then rate other people's versions of the same story, and string together your favourite sequence of events. I started out just writing a complete script, and then boiled it down to its simplest chunks, stripping out most of the dialogue, but keeping the flavour of each scene to give in one simple direction. It's a bit of an experiment, but I think it'll be fun to play with.

gaming at ces 2009

2009-01-12T13:28:00.001-08:00

http://www.cesweb.org/gaming/default.asp

Gaming

On the retail front, gaming set records with a total of $18.9 billion in 2007 — about 50 percent over 2006 retail sales, according to NPD. Console, accessories and software sales are to thank for the industry's success, and there are no signs of slowing. CEA predicts sales for hardware will remain steady at $6.4 billion while software bounds upward to $11.5 billion, bringing the total predicted sales for 2008 to $17.9 billion.

Register today for the 2009 International CES if the gaming/digital entertainment industry matters to you.

Source: Digital America, a CEA publication.

Gaming Technology Sessions

CES is the consumer technology industry's largest educational forum, featuring more than 200 conference sessions and 500 expert speakers. Here a few of our favorites for this market, but you can search by track/program, market, date, time, facility and speaker to tailor your session schedule.

Innovation in Games, Game Networks and Social Gaming - Massive User Communities and Commerce
Game Power: Entertainment and Branding as Franchise - As Games Integrate into the Movie, Music, TV, Mobile, Advertainment & Custom Branded Experience
Virtual Worlds and the Massively Multiplayer Gaming Explosion - the PC, the Console and Mobile
Mobile Gaming Experience - the Next Generation in Games, Devices and the Coming High Speed Delivery of Content
Casual Gaming – The Next Great Platform in Gaming – Console, Broadband and Mobile
CES Reinventing Advertising, Mobile Entertainment, and Game Power Networking Room
Just the Facts Knowledge Track Session: CEA Gaming

Just for Gaming Technology Professionals

While all consumer technology markets converge at CES, it's still easy to find specific segments that matter to you. If gaming technology is your primary interest, start by exploring these parts of the CES show floor:

Gaming Showcase
Casual Gaming
LVCC South Hall 2

Gaming and Digital Entertainment Products at CES

The International CES remains a must for gaming technology retailers and buyers. Meet companies in the following digital entertainment categories:

Content and services
Consoles, video adapters and set-top boxes
Whole-house video systems
Gaming software and hardware
Controllers, wiring and more

emerging technology at CES 2009

2009-01-12T13:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.cesweb.org/docs/2K9_ET_QuickGuide.pdf

CES.
Kids@Play Summit
Sands Expo and Convention Center
Sponsor: Living In Digital Times
From storybooks to Facebook, kids use a digital world to learn, communicate, and entertain themselves.
Join us as we explore the way being digital today creates a smarter world tomorrow.
Location Based Services
LVCC, North Hall
Location Based Services at CES features the latest technologies used to deliver highly personalized mobile
services, based on location, allowing the mobile network operator to offer differentiation and increased
profitability.
Silvers Summit
Sands Expo and Convention Center
Sponsor: Living In Digital Times
The Silvers Summit showcases distributors, journalists, research firms and manufacturers that will demonstrate
the products and services that keep boomers engaged, entertained, connected and healthy.
Sustainable Planet
LVCC, Central Hall
This CE Spotlight serves as the premier location for world-changing technology, whether benefiting the
environment or contributing to the cultural development of growing nations. Sustainable Planet houses
the Greener Gadgets and TEC TechZones.
QUICK GUIDE TO EMERGING TECHNOLOGY
at the 2009 International CES®
To find emerging
technolgy, look for
this icon on-site.
AWARDS PROGRAMS
Innovations 2009 Design and Engineering Awards Showcase
Sands Expo and Convention Center, Booth #72062
The Technology & Engineering Emmy® Awards
Wednesday, January 7
The Venetian, Lido 3101
6 p.m. Reception
7 p.m. Banquet
Global Media Awards™
Thursday, January 8
6 p.m. Reception: The Venetian, Titian 2304
7 p.m. Banquet: The Venetian, Bellini 2101

iLife 09

2009-01-11T04:06:00.000-08:00

garageband - storybehind the song, view lyrics adn notation, practice withoriginal tracks, create your ownmix, slow down any part. Musical artists teachyouto play their song - visually with keyboard/string animation. (meetheauthor.com similarity?)

iphoto - face recognition, gps geo-tagging, name tagging.

imovie =- precision editor, animated travel maps.

keynote - san francisco 09

gaming

2009-01-11T03:48:00.000-08:00

conversion /translation of concept of board games to apps or interactive digital gaming...

http://www.boardgamecompany.co.uk/

epic tilt - akon iphone app

2009-01-11T03:37:00.000-08:00

Category: Entertainment
Released: Dec 02, 2008
Price: Free

Description:
EpicTilt has teamed up with SRC/Universal to release an interactive digital album sleeve for Akon's new album "Freedom". This is the essential iPhone application for Akon fans to stay connected to all things Akon. Preview each of Akon's singles in the Freedom Album! Flip through pictures of Akon. Keep up with all the latest happenings in Akon's world via the "News Section". Check out Akon Videos in the "Videos" Section. Even includes and interactive discography! Best of all it's FREE!

Website: http://epictilt.com
Support Website: http://epictilt.com

Note: The description above is the official one supplied by the application developer and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of this site or its staff.

Get it on iTunes: Akon: Freedom

Technology Horizons Programme - institute for the future - http://www.iftf.org/tech

2009-01-09T10:33:00.000-08:00

web 3.0?? http://www.technologyreview.com/special/web3/

2009-01-09T10:27:00.000-08:00

E Tech - Emerging Technology Conference, SanJose, CA 9-12 March 09

2009-01-07T13:27:00.000-08:00

Schedule: Speakers

Shawn Allen (Stamen Design)

Maps From Scratch: Online Maps From The Ground Up

Shawn is a designer, programmer, and partner at Stamen. A jack of all trades and master of many, he takes an active role in both the conceptual design and technical implementation of Stamen’s dynamic information visualization systems.

A Connecticut native, Shawn moved to San Francisco in 1999 to pursue a formal fine arts education. But the pull of a career in the frenzied dot-com era proved too strong, and in 2000 he began working alongside Michal Migurski at a short-lived start-up. After several tumultuous years in the web design business he changed gears and developed the user interface for a console-based edition of the “Sims” video game franchise at Maxis. Shawn began working with Stamen in 2005 and became our third partner in January 2006. In his free time he makes music, rides bikes, climbs rocks, and travels around the world.

Jesper Andersen (University of Chicago)

I just don't trust you: How the Tech Community can reinvent risk ratings

Combining a technical background with quantitative business training, Jesper offers expertise in entrepreneurial technology, including social network analysis, data mining, and consumer web services. A 2008 graduate of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, he completed concentrations in entrepreneurism, finance, and econometrics. In 2007, Jesper interned with O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures as an associate. He is also the co-founder of Chicago Ignite, a lecture series devoted to talks by and for the tech community.

Prior to graduate school, Jesper served as the Lead Architect for Visible Path, a Kleiner Perkins backed social networking analysis startup, which was recently acquired by Hoovers. At Visible Path, Jesper was instrumental in producing patents in social network analysis, as well as the company’s relocation to the Bay Area, where he led the hiring of a local team of engineers, as well as a team of engineers in India.

Previously, Jesper held the position of Sr. Software Engineer at ScreamingMedia, a formerly public company syndicating news and financial content based on natural language classifications, now owned by DowJones. At ScreamingMedia, he was responsible for managing the technical conversion to a service-oriented architecture, as well as leading technical integration over three M&A transactions.

Jesper’s professional experience also includes developing client server software performing historical simulation risk analysis for Sailfish Systems, a Reuters subsidiary.

Jesper earned his B.S. in Physics from Haverford College and has published several articles in fluid dynamics and biophysics.

Ashwini Asokan (User Experience Group, Digital Home Group, Intel® Corporation )

From anywhere and anytime – to here and now: Imagining the future of technology in culturally relevant local contexts

Ashwini Asokan is a design researcher in the User Experience Group of Intel’s Digital Home Group. At the crossroads between research and design, Ashwini’s work spans from conducting ethnographic and design research to translating insights into consumer experiences which the designs of Intel’s digital home platforms are then imbued with. Her work at Intel is inspired by her interests and studies of cultures around the world. At various times in her career at Intel she has led the definition of future PC & CE consumer experiences, and worked with her team to establish key user experience processes and a culture informed and inspired by research from across the globe on people, homes and their daily life. She is constantly engaged in identifying new strategic opportunities for Intel’s digital home platforms. Her passion and current focus is on leading explorations in middle and upper class emerging markets, with an extensive focus on India, China and Brazil. She leads the emerging markets strategy in the Digital Home Group, driving what she considers to be critical to the future of computing.

Ashwini completed her Bachelors in Visual Communication from India and moved on to graduate from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design with a Masters in Interaction Design. Passionate about her own origin as a dancer – designer from India, Ashwini’s work from her younger years at school to her work presently at Intel has been an ongoing exploration of the threads of culture that run through movement, behavior, design and management.

Maribeth Back (FX Palo Alto Laboratory)

High-Tech Chocolate: Reinventing the Path from Pod to Palate

Maribeth Back is a senior research scientist at FX Palo Palo Laboratory. Her current research focuses on the intersection of virtual environments and real-world collaboration, with a bit of ubiquitous computing mixed in. She leads the Mixed and Immersive Realities group at FXPAL, looking at how the interplay of virtual environments with mobile systems and sensor-fusion networks can be useful in enterprise settings. Previously, Maribeth’s research included smart environments (real and virtual), multi-modal interface design, ubiquitous computing, new forms of reading and writing, and interactive audio systems design and engineering. Maribeth holds a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in Computational Design.

Shelley Batts (University of Michigan)

Hearing the Light: New Technologies for Restoring Hearing via Regeneration and Implants

I am a Neuroscience graduate student at the University of Michigan as well as a freelance science writer and blogger for ScienceBlogs/SEED Magazine. My PhD thesis is related to cures for deafness including gene therapy and small molecule intervention for cochlear hair cell regeneration, as well as innovating the next generation of cochlear implants.

Nick Bilton (The New York Times R&D Labs)

Plantr. Using Recycled Cell Phones to Promote Sustainability and Teach Urban Gardening.

Sensors, Smart Content and The Future of News

Nick Bilton is a Designer, User Interface Specialist, Technologist, Journalist, Hardware Hacker, Researcher, etc. etc.

Nick has worked in numerous different industries within the context of design, research & development, technology and storytelling. He is currently the Design Integration Editor for The New York Times and the User Interface Specialist & Lead Researcher for The New York Times Research & Development Lab working on a variety of research projects and exploring technologies that may become commonplace in the next 2-10 years. His work in the R&D Labs includes exploring and prototyping content and interaction on futuristic flexible digital displays, a vast array of mobile applications and devices, Times Reader (a collaborative project with Microsoft), Print-to-mobile SMS, Semacode integration, content in the living room and context aware sensors. He is also working on an explorative Data Visualization project with The Times looking at realtime user patterns, geographical context and historical content stretching back to 1851. Nick is also the co-founder, with Michael Young, of Shifd.com, a startup within The New York Times that helps people shift content easily between multiple devices, from web to mobile to TV, and vice-versa. Shifd recently won ‘Best overall Hack’ at last years Yahoo! Hack Day. Nick’s work has been profiled regularly in multiple books, magazines, newspapers and websites.

Outside of The Times, Nick helped co-found NYCResistor, a hacker space in Brooklyn which offers hardware and programming classes and allows people to collectively work on innovative open source hardware and robotics projects.

Julian Bleecker (Nokia Design)

Design Fiction

Julian Bleecker is a designer, technologist and researcher at the Design Strategic Projects studio at Nokia Design in Los Angeles and the Near Future Laboratory where he investigates emerging social practices around new networked interaction rituals. He focuses on hands-on prototyping as a way to make new things.

He lectures and leads workshops on the intersections of art, design, technology and the near-future possibilities for new social-technical interaction rituals. He has taught interactive media at Parson’s School of Design and the University of Southern California.

Julian has given talks and exhibited many of his emerging technology projects, designs and concepts in venues such as SIGGRAPH, LIFT, Xerox PARC, O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference and Where 2.0 Conference on Location-Based Technology, Ubicomp, Ars Electronica, ACM SIGCHI, ACM Advances in Computer Entertainment, Banff New Media Institute, American Museum of the Moving Image, Art Interactive, Boston Cyberarts Festival, SHiFT, Reboot, Eyebeam Atelier, and SK Telecom’s Art Center Nabi.

He has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, an MS Eng from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz where his dissertation was on the relationships amongst technology, entertainment and popular culture.

Marc Böhlen (University at Buffalo / Ailab Zurich)

The Glass Bottom Float - Towards Civic Robotics

Marc Böhlen is an artist-engineer, a maker of systems, situations and devices that critically reflect on the role of automation in the 21st century – in the widest sense possible. He is currently associate professor in the department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo and Visiting Artist at the AILAB of the University of Zürich. Böhlen’s research is tightly coupled to robotics design in methodology and succinctly different from it in scope and critical focus. It is an ongoing effort to diversify machine culture. Signal processing, artificial intelligence and control systems are cultural artifacts inscribed by those who create and use them in similar ways as more traditional media are acknowledged to be.

Recent research is centered on forms of mixed knowing, the combination of ways of knowing from different ontological and perceptual frameworks. The Glass Bottom Float project presented at ETech2009 attempts to combine human and machine knowing to formulate knowledge of water conditions at a public beach neither people nor machines alone can understand. Recent work has been presented at Cynetart (Dresden 2008), Dorkbot (Toronto 2008), and Satellite Voyeurism (Dortmund 2007). Recent and upcoming publications include Robots with Bad Accents; Living with Synthetic Speech (MIT Press 2008), Second Order Ambient Intelligence (JAISE 2009), Ambient Intelligence in the City (Springer 2009), and Micro Public Places (Architectural League New York 2009). See www.realtechsupport.org for details

Leah Buechley (MIT)

High-Low Tech: Democratizing Engineering and Design

LilyPad Electronic Fashion

Leah Buechley is an Assistant Professor at the MIT Media Lab where she directs the High-Low Tech research group. The High-Low Tech group explores the integration of high and low technology from cultural, material, and practical perspectives, with the goal of engaging diverse groups of people in developing their own technologies. Leah is a well-known expert in the field of electronic textiles (e-textiles), and her work in this area includes developing a method for creating cloth printed circuit boards (fabric PCBs) and designing the commercially available LilyPad Arduino toolkit. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Popular Science, CRAFT Magazine, Journal of Architectural Design, Denver Post, and the Taipei Times. Buechley received PhD and MS degrees in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a BA in physics from Skidmore College.

David Calkins (Robotics Society of America, et. al.)

Robots the Next Ten Years

David Calkins is a widely respected robot builder and expert. He teaches robotics and computer engineering at San Francisco State University, is the president of the Robotics Society of America, Founder of the international RoboGames/ROBOlympics competition, Program Chair of the RoboNexus Consumer and Entertainment Expo, and co-chair of the RoboSot competition for FIRA – the Federation of International Robosoccer Association. He was one of only ten US members of the Japanese Trade Association’s Robotics Mission to Japan, an official US-Japanese robotics technology business development and research mission.

As one of America’s most respected robotics authorities, David Calkins offers a rare blend of both technical and marketing insight into the world of robotics. He speaks on robotics to such diverse groups as the Young Presidents Organization, Stanford University, the San Jose Tech Museum, the Business4Site conference, the RoboNexus and RoboBusiness conferences, JavaOne and many others. Mr. Calkins stars in the San Francisco local weekly TV show “Mister Robotics”, and was also featured in two documentaries: the Discovery Channel’s special “Dungeons of Alcatraz” (in which he designed and built a robot used to explore tunnels beneath Alcatraz) and the Tech TV special “Bucket of Bolts”. He has also been featured on History Channel’s “Tactical to Practical”, Tech TV’s “ScreenSavers” and “Call for Help”, G4’s “Attack of the Show”, Outdoor Channel’s “Inside R/C”, GSN’s “Games Around America”, and has been profiled by CNN, Time, and the New York Times. He is also a prolific author in his own right; he writes two monthly columns for Servo Magazine and Robot Magazine, and has been published internationally.

Mr. Calkins works with NASA’s Robotics Education Project to involve kids in the building and competition of robots. He also enthusiastically helped mentor San Francisco’s John O’Connell High School USFIRST robotics team in 2005. On the business-side, Calkins has been a consultant for Sun Corporation’s JavaNator robotic development group, Evolution Robotics original ER-1 robot, and assisted DARPA on the creation of their Robotic Grand Challenge. In addition to serving as president of the Robotics Society of America since 2000, he also serves on the Board of Advisors for QBox (a mechanical, kinetic and electronic arts group) and BotBall (Robotics Educational Foundation). Calkins also judges for BotBall, FIRST Lego League, BattleBots, and the Robot Fighting League. He recently co-founded a company to build both competition robots and home-based consumer robots.

Barry Canton (Ginkgo BioWorks)

Real Hackers Program DNA

Barry Canton holds a BEng and an MEngSc from University College Dublin in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD from MIT in Biological Engineering. He has published pioneering work on the refinement and characterization of genetically encoded biological devices, building on the lessons of standardization from electronic engineering. His work to produce the first datasheet for a biological device serves as the prototype for device characterization in the MIT Registry of Standard Biological Parts. During his graduate work, he also constructed the first biological “virtual machine” to decouple system operation from the cellular chassis. Barry is also a founder of OpenWetWare, an online community of life science researchers committed to open science. Now he and four other MITers have founded a new synthetic biology startup called Ginkgo BioWorks.

Ben Cerveny (Stamen Design)

The New 'Situation': Frameworks for Spatial Mediation

Cerveny is a strategic and conceptual advisor to Stamen, helping to articulate an approach toward creative visualization and to evaluate and develop potential partners and engagements relative to that vision. He is a highly regarded experience designer and conceptual strategist, guiding the creative direction and vision of multiple successful endeavors, both public and private. His clients include Nokia, Sony, and Philips, as well as the Cities of Amsterdam and Barcelona. Previously, he was founder of the Experience Design Lab at frogdesign, an international product design company, and a lead designer and platform development strategist at Ludicorp, makers of Flickr.

Timothy Childs (TCHO )

High-Tech Chocolate: Reinventing the Path from Pod to Palate

Timothy Childs is a successful chocolate entrepreneur, with previous experience co-founding and launching Cabaret Chocolates, an early pioneer of single-origin chocolate with distribution through Whole Foods and other national outlets. Prior to his initiation in the chocolate industry, he worked on machine vision with NASA’s Space Shuttle program, and launched several early-stage companies in the internet and computer graphics industries. Timothy has a deep background in community building, and was a cofounder of both VeRGe and Web3D RoundUP. Timothy’s other obsessions are paragliding and video timelapse projects.

Jeremy Cloud (Synthesis Studios)

WattzOn: Crowdsourcing a Solution to Climate Change

As a senior software architect at Synthesis, Jeremy specializes in software prototyping and algorithmic design. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Northwestern University. Jeremy enjoys designing and implementing domain specific languages, such as the one used in Holmz, the brains behind www.WattzOn.com.

Matt Cottam (Tellart, Rhode Island School of Design and Umeå Institute of Design)

Holistic Service Prototyping: Sketching Hardware and Software

Matt Cottam studied Industrial Design at Rhode Island School of Design. In the 10 years since graduation he has been teaching courses at RISD on topics including product and service design, physical computing, design for emergency medicine, and human habitation and life support in extreme environments. Matt is a Paramedic for the Department of Health and Human Services as well as the National Ski Patrol. Since 2004 he has been a faculty member at the Design Institute Umeå in Sweden, where he teaches the Experience Prototyping Course. In 2000 Matt co-founded Tellart, a product, service, and environment design firm with offices in Rhode Island and California. Tellart’s clients include international manufacturers and service providers such as Nokia, Humana, Novartis, Otis Elevator and Stanford University. Matt serves as Tellart’s CEO and works closely with clients using information architecture and design methods to research challenges, discover opportunities for innovation, and build strategies and tactics for design interventions.

Colleen Crary (IEEE Standards Association)

IEEE-Tech: Redefining Standards for Emerging Technologies

Colleen Crary is a veteran of the global corporate workforce in strategic marketing and new business development, offering support to emerging technology businesses.

Creating consumer-centric products and programming is one of her specialties, listening to the voice of the customer (VoC) and creating cross-organizational teams to realize consumer solutions. With a knack for bringing business and technology interests together in mutually beneficial alliances, she forms and leads productive teams that deliver revenue.

She has also worked for investors to help commercialize and bring to market new programs, products and services, driving new product development, creating new markets, and adding positive growth to existing markets. This includes the formation and leadership of (peaceful) productive teams that consist of technological, science and financial interests.

Her clients have included Siemens, IEEE, Toshiba, Microsoft, IBM, Nokia, Nortel, Panasonic, T-Mobile, Sanyo, Intel, Sun Microsystems, Sony, AT&T, D-Link, Kingston, Lexar Media, LG Chem, Motorola, Philips, SanDisk, Sprint, Texas Instruments, and Hewlett Packard.

Andrew Dent (Material ConneXion, Inc.)

New Materials

Dr. Dent plays a key role in the expansion of Material ConneXion’s technical knowledge base. His primary function is to direct research into innovative products and processes. His research directs the selection of materials to be juried into Material ConneXion’s library and guides the implementation of consultancy projects. His role includes coordinating the monthly jury selections that vote 50-60 new materials into Material ConneXion’s libraries in New York, Milan, Cologne, Daegu, and Bangkok as well as management of the physical library team and our online database.

Dr. Dent received his Ph.D. in materials science from the University of Cambridge in England. Prior to joining Material ConneXion, Dr. Dent held a number of research positions both in industry and academia. At Rolls Royce PLC, Dr. Dent specialized in turbine blades for the present generation of jet engines. He has completed postdoctoral research at Cambridge University and at the Center for Thermal Spray Research, SUNY, Stony Brook, NY. Other research projects, during this period, included work for the US Navy, DARPA, NASA, and the British Ministry of Defense.

Dr. Dent has contributed to many publications and books, and is the co-author of the books ‘Material Connexion: A Global Resource Of New And Innovative Materials For Architects, Artists And Designers’ with George M. Beylerian and “Ultramaterials: How Materials Innovation is Changing the World.” He currently writes “Material Innovatoin” – a bi-weekly column for BusinessWeek’s online Innovation Page. He is a frequent speaker on materials innovation and design across many disciplines.

Chris Dunphy (Two Steps Beyond)

Tales from Technomadia

Chris is the former Director of Competitive Analysis for Palm and PalmSource, but for the past three years has been independent and turned his life into a living laboratory for technomadic living.

Nathan Eagle (MIT)

txteagle: Crowd-Sourcing on Mobile Phones in the Developing World

Nathan Eagle is a Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. His research involves applying machine learning and network analysis techniques to large human behavioral datasets generated by mobile phones. As a Fulbright Scholar in 2006, he launched MIT’s EPROM (Entrepreneurial Programming and Research on Mobiles) initiative while teaching in universities in Kenya and Ethiopia, developing a mobile phone programming curriculum that has been adopted by twelve Computer Science departments across Africa. He graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, an M.S. in Management Science and Engineering, and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering. His PhD from the MIT Media Laboratory on Reality Mining was declared one of the ‘10 technologies most likely to change the way we live’ by the MIT Technology Review magazine. Nokia recently named him one of the top mobile phone developers in the world. In 2008, he formed the company txteagle with the goal of enabling the 2 billion mobile phone subscribers living in the developing world to generate income using their phones. His research is regularly featured in the media including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and CNN.

Greg Elin (Sunlight Foundation)

Mr. Hacker Goes to Washington

Greg Elin created the Sunlight Labs at the Sunlight Foundation in 2006 and now serves as the organization’s Chief Data Architect, where he researches and evangelizes new ways to share heterogeneous, incomplete government data. The Sunlight Foundation is a Washington DC-based non-partisan grant making and programming foundation committed to helping citizens, bloggers and journalists be their own best congressional watchdogs, by improving access to existing information and digitizing new information, and by creating new tools and Web sites to enable all of us to collaborate in fostering greater transparency. Greg Elin is also the creator of Fotonotes, an open-source image annotation technology, and has attended Etech for many years and learned a great deal.

Drew Endy (Stanford & The BioBricks Foundation (BBF))

Building a New Biology

Drew Endy is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Bioengineering at Stanford University. He previously helped set up the Department of Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He serves as President of the BioBricks Foundation, a not-for-profit organization promoting open access to biological technologies, and has cofounded two biotechnology companies. Esquire magazine recently named Drew one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century. Drew gained his doctorate in biochemical engineering from Dartmouth College and carried out postdoctoral research at University of Texas and University of Wisconsin.

Rob Faludi (NYU)

Socializing Stuff: a Wireless Objects Workshop

Robert Faludi is an graduate instructor at NYU and a specialist physical computing and networked objects. He holds a B.A. from Oberlin College, an M.A. in Cognitive Psychology from New York University, and a second Masters in Interactive Telecommunications also from NYU. For ten years, his San Francisco-based Faludi Computing supported Internet startups like Match.com and Salon, and created interactive web sites for companies like Gap, Visa, Lonely Planet and American Eagle Outfitters. As a researcher for NYU’s Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, he investigated the connections between visual perception, motor action and the mathematical properties of environmental affordances. At ITP he specialized in physical computing, dense social networks and networked objects, work continued as a Resident Researcher there and at Microsoft Research. He frequently consults on interactive projects including recent work in entertainment, architecture, and toys. Faludi’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Wired Magazine, Good Morning America, BBC World and many other publications. Projects include Social Genius, a multimedia name-learning game; WildLight, a networked device that brings organic light to dark or windowless spaces and BlueWay, a networked location and wayfinding system. He is a co-creator of the LilyPad XBee wearable radios, and Botanicalls, a system that allows thirsty plants to place phone calls for human help.

Mark Frauenfelder (Make Magazine)

Urban Homesteading: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Modern Making

Maia Garau (Dynamic Diagrams)

Holistic Service Prototyping: Sketching Hardware and Software

Maia Garau teaches at RISD and is a senior user experience consultant with Dynamic Diagrams, where she translates research into visual explanations that bring complex ideas to life. Recent projects focused on information design and service improvements for clients including Hewlett Packard, the Aerospace Corporation and the World Health Organization. Prior to joining Dynamic Diagrams she was sponsored by British Telecom to conduct doctoral research on improving avatar-mediated communication. She went on to manage a European Union research project on social presence in virtual environments, and then focused on design strategy for Radar’s mobile picture-sharing service. Maia has a BA in comparative literature from Brown University, an MSc in virtual environments from the Bartlett School of Architecture, and a PhD in computer science from University College London.

James Governor (RedMonk)

Electricity 2.0: Applying The Lessons Of The Web To Our Energy Networks

Co-founder of RedMonk, the first open source analyst company. Work with firms like Adobe, IBM, Microsoft, and Sun, helping them to understand how the IT world is changing and how they should respond.

I live and work in London with my wife and son. I travel too much. I could live in a mud hut and only eat raw vegetables and still have the carbon footprint of a small town.

David Grewal (Harvard & BBF)

Building a New Biology

David Singh Grewal is the author of Network Power: The Social Dynamics of Globalization, which is his first book. He is currently at Harvard University, where he is a PhD candidate in the field of political theory. His dissertation, Markets, Morals and Minds: A History of Political Economy is now nearing completion. David is a graduate of the Yale Law School and of Harvard College. He is an American Citizen and an Overseas Citizen of India. He is married to Daniela Cammack and lives in Cambridge, Mass.

mark hansen (ucla)

Plantr. Using Recycled Cell Phones to Promote Sustainability and Teach Urban Gardening.

Mark Hansen is an Associate Professor of Statistics at UCLA, where he also holds joint appointments in the Departments of Design|Media Art and Electrical Engineering. Since 2006, he has served as a Co-PI for the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, an NSF STC.

Liz Henry (BlogHer)

DIY for PWD: Do It Yourself for People with Disabilities

Liz Henry is a producer and developer at BlogHer, the award-winning aggregation, syndication and advertising network for women bloggers. She has been writing online since 1990, drafted the Common Public Attribution License for SocialText, and has been a key figure in organizing BarCampBlock, WoolfCamp, the Tiptree Awards and Wiki Wednesday. She has been a wheelchair user for fifteen years, and is a proud member of the Secret Feminist Cabal.

Brian Hinch (Tellart)

Holistic Service Prototyping: Sketching Hardware and Software

Brian Hinch has been working at Tellart since 2001 and currently serves as its Technology Director. Since studying Graphic Design at Rhode Island School of Design he has been designing and developing tools for designers of various stripes. While working at Tellart he has focused on building a set of hardware and software tools that can be used to quickly prototype new products. Recently he has been looking at ways to prototype services—systems of physical and software elements. With other Tellart team members, Brian has led workshops at the Industrial Design Society of America’s annual conference and has taught the Experience Prototyping Course in the Interaction Design Masters Program at Umeå University Institute of Design in Sweden.

Andrew "bunnie" Huang (Chumby Industries)

Out of China: Manufacturing the Chumby

Andrew “bunnie” Huang, VP Hardware Engineering and Founder, is a nocturnal hacker and the hardware lead; his responsibilities include the architecture, design and production of chumby devices, as well as the strategic planning and ecosystem development of the broader Chumby hardware platform. With a PhD in EE from MIT, he has completed several major projects, ranging from hacking the Xbox (and writing the eponymous book), to designing the world’s first fully-integrated photonic-silicon chips running at 10 Gbps with Luxtera, Inc., to building some of the first prototype hardware for silicon nanowire device research with Caltech. bunnie has also participated in the design of 802.11b/Bluetooth transceivers (with Mobilian), graphics chips (with SGI), digital cinema CODECs (with Qualcomm), and autonomous robotic submarines (with MIT ORCA/AUVSI). He is also responsible for the un-design of many security systems, with an appetite for the challenge of digesting silicon-based hardware security. bunnie is also a contributing writer for MAKE magazine and a member of their technical advisory board.

Andrew Hunt (Pragmatic Programmers, LLC)

Refactor Your Wetware

Andy started in the do-it-yourself days of CP/M and the S100 bus, of Heathkits and Radio Electronics. Andy wrote his first real program, a combination text editor and database manager, for an Ohio Scientific Challenger 4P. It was a great era for tinkering. Andy started hacking in 6502 assembler, modifying operating systems, and wrote his first commercial program (a Manufacturing Resources Planning system) in 1981. He taught himself Unix and C, and began to design and architect larger, more connected systems.

Working at large companies, Andy kept an ear on Usenet, and started his early email habit via a direct bang-path to ihnp4. Next he settled into electronic pre-press and computer graphics, and worked on that wondrous eye-candy that was Silicon Graphics machines. By now a firm command of several flavors of Unix, from BSD to System V, led Andy to try consulting. His knack for stirring things up really began to come in handy, and it soon became obvious that many of his clients each suffered similar problems—-problems that Andy had already seen and fixed before.

Andy joined up with Dave Thomas and they wrote the seminal software development book, The Pragmatic Programmer, followed a year later by the original Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide, which introduced the Western world to this new language from Japan. Together they founded The Pragmatic Programmers and have became increasingly well known, as founders of the new agile movement and authors of the Agile Manifesto, as well as proponents of Ruby and more flexible programming paradigms, and their Pragmatic Bookshelf publishing business, helping keep developers at the top of their game.

Andy is a member of IEEE and ACM, founder of the Pragmatic Programmers, founder of the Agile Alliance and author of the Agile Manifesto, and author of six books. He is an active musician and woodworker, and continues looking for new areas where he can stir things up.

Tom Igoe (Interactive Telecommunications Program, NYU)

Hands-On RFID for Makers

Open Fabrication and the Environment or Taking Spime Apart

Plantr. Using Recycled Cell Phones to Promote Sustainability and Teach Urban Gardening.

Joichi Ito (Creative Commons)

Creative Commons - Creating Legal and Technical Interoperability

Joichi Ito is the CEO of Creative Commons (http://www.creativecommons.org). He is a co-founder and board member of Digital Garage (http://www.garage.co.jp/) and the CEO of Neoteny (http://www.neoteny.com.) He is on the board of Technorati (http://www.technorati.com/) and helps run Technorati Japan (http://www.technorati.jp/). He is a Senior Visiting Researcher of Keio Research Institute at SFC in Japan. He is the Chairman of Six Apart Japan (http://www.sixapart.jp/) the weblog software company. He is on board of a number of non-profit organizations including The Mozilla Foundation, WITNESS (http://www.witness.org/) and Global Voices (http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/). He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan and was an early stage investor in Six Apart, Technorati, Flickr, SocialText, Dopplr, Last.fm, Rupture, Kongregate, etology Inc and other Internet companies. He has served and continues to serve on various Japanese central as well as local government committees and boards, advising the government on IT, privacy and computer security related issues. He is currently researching “The Sharing Economy” as a Doctor of Business Administration candidate at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy at Hitotsubashi University in Japan. He maintains a weblog (http://joi.ito.com/) where he regularly shares his thoughts with the online community. He is the Guild Custodian of the World of Warcraft guild, We Know (http://weknow.to/).

Ito was listed by Time Magazine as a member of the “Cyber-Elite” in 1997. Ito was listed as one of the 50 “Stars of Asia” by BusinessWeek and commended by the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in 2000. He was selected by the World Economic Forum in 2001 as one of the “Global Leaders for Tomorrow”, chosen by Newsweek as a member of the “Leaders of The Pack” in 2005, and listed by Vanity Fair as a member of “The Next Establishment” in 2007. Ito was also named by Businessweek as one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web in 2008.

Tony Jebara (Columbia University & Sense Networks)

Mobile Phones Reveal the Behavior of Places and People

Mary Lou Jepsen (Pixel Qi)

Keynote

Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen was recently named one of the hundred most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in May 2008 for her work in creating Pixel Qi, and her previous work at One Laptop per Child where she was the founding chief technology officer. Notably Mary Lou invented the laptop’s sunlight-readable display technology and co-invented its ultra-low-power management system. Critically, she transformed these inventions into ready-to-ship hardware, integrated into the XO laptop. Mary Lou convinced some of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers to create the XO with her, and she created and managed the relationships between OLPC and them. She was responsible for all of the OLPC hardware, mechanicals, electronics, display, integration, manufacturating, certification, and environmental footprint reduction during her tenure at OLPC.

The XO laptop is the lowest-cost laptop ever made, the lowest-power laptop ever made, and the most environmentally friendly laptop ever made. It has received numerous awards, drawn widespread global attention, and spurred the new class of compact laptop – which is expected to grow to over 50 million units by 2010.

Mary Lou’s earlier contributions have had world-wide adoption in successful HDTV, projector and head-mounted display products. She has been a pioneer in single-panel field-sequential projection display systems and liquid-crystal-on-silicon system-on-chip devices. She co-founded the first company whose sole effort was development of microdisplays in 1995 (The Microdisplay Corporation) and served as its chief technology officer through 2003. Until the end of 2004, she was a group executive and the chief technology officer of the display division at Intel Corporation.

Mary Lou holds a Ph.D. in Optical Sciences, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (with honors) and a B.A. (req.) in Studio Art all from Brown University as well as a Master of Science in Holography from the MIT Media Lab.

Brian Jepson (O'Reilly Media, Inc.)

Hands-On RFID for Makers

Brian Jepson is Executive Editor for Make Magazine’s Make:Books series, co-author of Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks, and has written and edited a number of other geeky books. Hes also a volunteer system administrator and all-around geek for AS220, a non-profit arts center that gives Rhode Island artists uncensored and unjuried forums for their work.

Eduardo Jezierski (InSTEDD)

Collaboration for Disaster Resilience: InSTEDD in the Mekong Delta

Eduardo Jezierski has spent his whole career designing, implementing, and deploying software solutions on a global scale. He originally received an MsC in Informatics after initial work in nuclear engineering, and later worked in Argentina in the areas of GIS analysis, machine learning, and modeling for anthropology challenges. His Master’s thesis was on robotics control, genetic algorithms and neural networks. He spent nine years in software development at Microsoft, first supporting largest enterprise customers, then later as Program Manager and Solutions Architect.

He was one of the founders of a team dedicated to building software assets (tools, practices, frameworks, services, content and information architectures) to improve quality and productivity of Microsoft’s business customers. The usage of these assets and frameworks climbed at its inception from zero to more than a million developers worldwide and adoption in excess of 80% of the target market – including financial, healthcare, military, and manufacturing customers.

Mr. Jezierski also developed a strategy for building communities consisting of academia, software vendors, other technical partners, customers and grassroots participants by initiating new SharedSource approach for engineering at Microsoft. There are now more than 25,000 registered members and hundreds of thousands of lines of source code shared between the participants, while still maintaining acceptable IP protection for Microsoft and other members. A practitioner of agile software-design approaches, he has built and led numerous global teams in producing mission-critical assets in just months, and has presented on software architectures and design approaches for large distributed systems in conferences around the globe. Most recent development arenas include transactional and analytics systems, software systems integration, scalable web services, and user interface design.

He helped found a team at Microsoft dedicated to starting new businesses by providing an internal venture capital model and growing innovation practices and entrepreneurship in the company, working directly with the staff of the Chief Software Architect. He contributed to defining strategy and early execution of the new group and delivered prototypes in the domain of mesh architectures, real-time communications and immersive web environments for long-tail retail. Several of these prototypes were designed, written, and validated in the field in collaboration with Microsoft’s Humanitarian Systems Group.

Jeevan Kalanithi (Taco Lab LLC)

Cookie Scale Computing: Human-Computer Interfaces as Piles of Gesture Sensitive Displays

Jeevan Kalanithi is a designer and technologist specializing in human-computer interaction and physical computing. He is a principal and founder of Taco Lab, a design/engineering firm specializing in physical-to-cloud interfaces.

Jeevan and his collaborators’ works have been shown at venues such as Villette Numerique, EYEBEAM, the Oslo Philharmonic and the Miami Art Museum. Jeevan has received awards including honors from the ID Magazine Student Design Review and a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. His work has been featured in publications such as Gizmodo, Engadget, Wired Gagdet Blog, PC Magazine, Media Magazine and The Boston Globe.

Jeevan holds an SM from The Media Lab at MIT and BS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford.

Lisa Katayama (TokyoMango)

Japanese Tech Culture: Demystifying "Weird" Japanese Toys and Tools

Lisa Katayama is a bilingual journalist and Japanese contemporary culture expert. Her blog, TokyoMango.com, is an archive of fun products, strange news, and cultural tidbits from her native Japan. Her book, Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan, is a collection of life hacks that use ordinary objects to do extraordinary things. Recent assignments include stories for Wired, PopSci, Boing Boing, Gizmodo, and PRI’s Studio360. She has a MA in Human Rights from Columbia and lives on the West Coast.

Zoë Keating (www.zoekeating.com)

Using a 17th Century Instrument to Create the Music of the 21st Century

Armed with her cello and a computer, Zoë Keating is a one-woman orchestra. She records layer upon layer of cello, her feet dancing over an array of pedals to transform her solo performances into multipart works. Classically trained from the age of eight, Zoë spent her post-graduate years working in computer software and moonlighting as a cellist. Inevitably, she combined the two, and developed her signature style while improvising for late night crowds in San Francisco warehouse spaces.

Zoë’s self-produced album, “One Cello x 16: Natoma”, was #1 on the iTunes Classical charts and #2 in iTunes Electronica. She has performed on NPR, written music for film and played with Imogen Heap, Mark Isham, DJ Shadow, The Dresden Dolls, Paolo Nutini and Rasputina.

Aaron Koblin (Google)

Making Art with Lasers, Sensors and the Net

Aaron Koblin is an Artist|Designer|Researcher focused on creating and visualizing human systems. Currently part of Google’s Creative Lab in San Francisco, California, Aaron creates software and architectures to transform social and infrastructural data into rich digital expression. Koblin’s work has been shown internationally and is part of the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

Raffi Krikorian (Synthesis)

WattzOn: Crowdsourcing a Solution to Climate Change

Raffi’s expertise lies in taking things apart and putting them back together in interesting ways. He’s the author of TiVo Hacks: 100 Industrial Strength Tips and Tools, a co-creator of Internet Zero, and serves as an advisor to the platform for open source media. In the past, Raffi was, in association with the Australian Film TV and Radio School (AFTRS), a technical mentor at the Laboratory for Advanced Media Production (LAMP); he also was on the program committee for the 2005 O’Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference.

Raffi’s interests include speculating on the future of television and radio, mobile computing, “inter-networking”, P2P, social software, alternate reality gaming, and embedded systems design. He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Communications at the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, which was named by Business Week as one of the top D-schools. Academically, Raffi holds an SB and a MEng in EE/CS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an SM from the Physics and Media group of the MIT Media Lab.

Derek Lomas (UC San Diego AND Playpower.org)

Playpower: Designing 8-bit learning games for Radically Affordable Computers

Derek Lomas, MFA, is a scientist and artist who currently directs the Social Movement Laboratory at the California Institute of Telecommunications and Technology (Calit2) at UC, San Diego.

The Social Movement Laboratory, founded by Mr. Lomas and Natalie H.M. Jeremijenko, is a hybrid arts laboratory researching the aesthetics and dynamics of social activity.

William E. Lowell (Business Development Directives)

IEEE-Tech: Redefining Standards for Emerging Technologies

Bill Lowell is Founder and President of Business Development Directives (BDD), a nationally recognized, research-driven marketing and management consulting firm. With more than 20 years of experience working with some of the world’s leading technology organizations, Bill has authored more than 50 incisive articles on research, marketing and business, and facilitated more than 1,500 interactive presentations. He is also the author of the book titled “Focus Groups Made Simple.”

Chris Luebkeman (Arup)

Urban Futures

Dr. Chris Luebkeman is a bridge builder of many kinds. He is a third generation educator who has been formally educated as a geologist, structural engineer and architect who believes that successful design cannot be separated from breadth of knowledge and steadfast inquiry. Prior to joining Arup in 1999, he taught in the Departments of Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [ETH] in Zurich, the University of Oregon, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT].

His industry funded research program at MIT, which continues today, is entitled ‘house_n; MIT’s intelligent home of the future.’ This is a technology and tectonic exploration of the integration of the digital with the physical.

He continues to utilize his broad interests and enthusiastic belief in our zeitgeist in his current position as Director for Global Foresight and Innovation at Ove Arup & Partners (www.arup.com) headquartered in London. His experiences have enabled him to specialize in being a generalist with a view to being “in league with the future.”

Chris joined Arup to become joint Director of Research and Development. He co-led a group of over fifty of the firm’s most highly skilled and technically able individuals. He was responsible for developing the role of the group with a focus on design research. He has enjoyed a particular responsibility within the Arup Group for encouraging and mentoring innovation projects.

Chris is an active facilitator and motivational speaker. He lectures widely [51 cities in 26 countries in 2006-2008] on the future, sustainability, and innovation, as well as on research at Arup.

facilitated the creation of an eCommerce strategy, initiated a series of research projects on the future and is constantly encouraging lateral thinking. He is a member of Arup’s Design and Technical Executive which promotes the highest standards of design and technical skill to ensure that Arup is one of the world’s leading practitioners in its chosen fields.

He is currently spending most of his time and energy building a better understanding of the way in which the driving forces of global change should be incorporated into more effective global business strategies. His current role puts him at the forefront of understanding where ‘things are heading’ and enables Arup to be there first.

Jane McGonigal (Avant Game)

Superstruct: How to Invent the Future by Playing a Game

Mike McKay (Baobab Health Malawi)

Hacking Healthcare Technology in Africa

Mike McKay likes to hack for social justice. Before figuring out how to actually do that he worked for the bad guys in big media. Now he lives in Malawi, Africa and together with his team is using technology to fight HIV in one of the poorest places on earth.

David Merrill (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab)

Cookie Scale Computing: Human-Computer Interfaces as Piles of Gesture Sensitive Displays

David Merrill is currently finishing his Ph.D. in the Ambient Intelligence Group at the MIT Media Lab. Before MIT he was at Stanford (BS ‘00, MS ‘02), where he studied human-computer interaction and cognitive science, and built new instruments for electronic music. David’s work is in the area of interfaces and systems for ubiquitous information access and manipulation, and his expertise encompasses product invention, design, and implementation (hardware + embedded firmware + software + wireless communication). His latest project, in collaboration with Jeevan Kalanithi, is Siftables – the world’s first general-purpose, distributed, inch-scale tangible user interface platform.

David’s work has been featured in meetings such as Siggraph, CHI and Maker Faire, and publications such as PC Magazine, ID Magazine, and The Boston Globe.

David is from Santa Cruz County, California.

Michal Migurski (Stamen Design)

Maps From Scratch: Online Maps From The Ground Up

Stamen partner Michal Migurski architects the technical aspects of Stamen’s work, moving comfortably from active participation in Stamen’s design process, designing database schemas and API’s, to creating the dynamic applications that Stamen delivers to clients.

Michal has been building for the web since 1995, specializing in data design and publishing for a diverse range of clients and numerous public, technical research projects and active open source codebases. He’s a Polish National and holds a degree in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley. He maintains an active weblog at mike.teczno.com, and likes to talk in front of groups.

Eric Paulos (Carnegie Mellon University)

Enabling Citizen Science

Eric Paulos is an Assistant Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute within the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Previously he was Senior Research Scientist at Intel in Berkeley, California where he founded the Urban Atmospheres research group – challenged to employ innovative methods to explore urban life and the future fabric of emerging technologies across public urban landscapes. His areas of expertise span a deep body of research territory in urban computing, sustainability, green design, environmental awareness, social telepresence, robotics, physical computing, interaction design, persuasive technologies, and intimate media. Eric is a leading figure in the field of urban computing and is a regular contributor, editorial board member, and reviewer for numerous professional journals and conferences. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley where he helped launch a new robotic industry by developing some of the first internet tele-operated robots including Space Browsing helium filled blimps and Personal Roving Presence devices (PRoPs).

Eric is also the founder and director of the Experimental Interaction Unit and a frequent collaborator with Mark Pauline of Survival Research Laboratories. Eric’s work has been exhibited at the InterCommunication Center (ICC) in Japan, Ars Electronica, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, the Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF), SFMOMA, the Chelsea Art Museum, Art Interactive, LA MOCA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the ZKM, Southern Exposure, and a performance for the opening of the Whitney Museum’s 1997 Biennial Exhibition.

Tom Raftery (RedMonk)

Electricity 2.0: Applying The Lessons Of The Web To Our Energy Networks

Seth Raphael (MIT Media Lab)

Scratch: Visual Programming for Anyone

Seth Raphael has a Masters in Magic and Technology. It shows. His performances destroy

Eric Rasmussen (InSTEDD)

Collaboration for Disaster Resilience: InSTEDD in the Mekong Delta

Dr. Eric Rasmussen was elected in October 2007 as Chief Executive Officer of InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters), an international nonprofit organization founded by Google.org and dedicated to delivering innovative technological support to those who help the world stay safe.

Prior to accepting this position Dr. Rasmussen was both Chairman of the Department of Medicine within Naval Hospital Bremerton near Seattle, Washington, and an advisor in humanitarian informatics for the US Office of the Secretary of Defense. He holds academic positions at several institutions and has been a Principal Investigator for both the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and for the National Science Foundation. He is a Reviewer for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the American Journal of Public Health and sits on several advisory boards, including the Crisis Management Resources Board for the National Academy of Sciences. He has a number of publications and has been awarded several personal, unit, and theater military decorations, including a Presidential Legion of Merit.

Dr. Rasmussen spent seven years enlisted in nuclear submarines before leaving the Navy to receive his undergraduate and medical degrees from Stanford University. After graduate work in molecular biology at Los Alamos National Laboratory and teaching in Haiti, he completed a Residency in Internal Medicine and re-entered the Navy as Chief Resident in Medicine at the Navy Medical Center in Oakland, California. Subsequent Navy positions included three years as Fleet Surgeon for the US Navy’s Third Fleet.

Dr. Rasmussen, with an additional European Master’s Degree in Disaster Medicine, served on the Afghanistan humanitarian support planning staff within US Central Command Headquarters (CENTCOM) in 2002, and later as a physician to the Iraq Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) for the Iraq War in 2002-2003. As a member of the DART, he served within the International Humanitarian Operations Center in Kuwait and was later selected for the DARPA 2003 “Sustained Excellence in a Principal Investigator” award.

Further work as Director of the Strong Angel series of international humanitarian support demonstrations led to work in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2007, and in Indonesia as head of a Civil-Military Coordination Team for the tsunami response in Banda Aceh in early 2005. Later in 2005, he deployed with Joint Task Force Katrina in New Orleans, coordinating a small portion of the relief response after Hurricane Katrina.

In addition to his responsibilities at InSTEDD, he currently serves as Permanent Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Forum on Water Disasters, and as a member of Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum.

Eric has been married for more than 20 years to Demi, and has daughters Melissa and Faith. He divides his time between Palo Alto and a small ranch near Olympic National Park in western Washington.

Dustyn Roberts (Honeybee Robotics & ITP)

Materials & Mechanisms

Dustyn is currently working for the Manhattan based engineering firm Honeybee Robotics and is just returning from an extended assignment with an Australian mining company in Perth. Previously, she helped design and integrate a subsystem for NASA’s 2009 Mars Science Laboratory mission. She has consulted for an artist in residence at Eyebeam (with ITP alumni James Powderly and Michelle Kempner), taught an adult “Robots for Beginners” class at a robot toy store, and sometimes helps out another ITP alumni Jeff Fedderson developing sustainable energy projects for the Habana Outpost. She was featured in October 2006 in the BBC Science pilot “Battle of the Geeks,” and published an article in the Journal of Applied Biomechanics in 2007. Her interests range from sustainable energy to animatronics and everything in between.

Eric Rodenbeck (Stamen Design)

New Data Visualization: Reaching through Maps

Eric Rodenbeck is Stamen’s founder and creative director. He is a 10-year veteran of the interactive design field, and has spent this time working to extend the boundaries of online media and live information visualization.

Eric led the interactive storytelling and data-driven narrative effort at Quokka Sports, illustrated and designed at Wired and Wired Books, and was a co-founder of the design collective Umwow. He has lectured and spoken at Yale University, the University of Southern California, numerous O’Reilly technology conferences, Esther Dyson’s PC Forum, and South by Southwest, among others. Eric studied architecture at Cooper Union in New York City and received a B.A. in the History and Philosophy of Technology from The New School for Social Research.

Jason Schultz (Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic, UC Berkeley School of Law)

Building a New Biology

Jason M. Schultz is the Acting Director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic and a clinical instructor at the UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). Before joining Boalt Hall as a faculty member in the Samuelson Clinic, he was a Senior Staff Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), one of the leading digital rights groups in the world. Prior to EFF, he practiced intellectual property law at the firm of Fish & Richardson, P.C. and served as a clerk to the Honorable D. Lowell Jensen of the Northern District of California. While a student at Boalt Hall, he managed the Berkeley Technology Law Journal and interned for the Honorable Ronald M. Whyte of the Northern District of California.

Toby Segaran (Metaweb)

I just don't trust you: How the Tech Community can reinvent risk ratings

Toby Segaran is the author of the O’Reilly title, “Programming Collective Intelligence”, Amazon’s top-selling AI book, and the Data Magnate at Metaweb Technologies. Prior to Metaweb he founded and sold a biotechnology software company. He loves applying data-mining algorithms to everything ranging from pharmaceutical trials to online dating to financial risk models.

Reshma Shetty (Ginkgo BioWorks)

Real Hackers Program DNA

Reshma Shetty graduated from MIT with a PhD in Biological Engineering in 2008 where she engineered bacterial to smell like mint and banana. Reshma Shetty has been active in the field for several years and co-organized SB1.0, the first international conference in synthetic biology in 2004. She spearheaded the use of OpenWetWare, a wiki for life science researchers, as an educational tool when she helped teach an MIT undergraduate laboratory course in synthetic biology in 2006. The course demonstrated how wiki’s can support university education and has served as a model for courses from institutions across the country. She also engineered bacteria to smell like mint and banana’s. Now she and four other MITers have founded a new synthetic biology startup called Ginkgo BioWorks.

Kevin Slavin (area/code)

The New 'Situation': Frameworks for Spatial Mediation

Kevin Slavin is the Managing Director and co-Founder of area/code. He has worked in corporate communications for technology-based clients for 13 years, including IBM, Compaq, Dell, TiVo, Time/Warner Cable, Microsoft, Wild Tangent and Qwest Wireless.

Zach Smith (RepRap Research Foundation)

Printing in 3D

Zach Smith likes to dream big, fail big, and win big. His true passion in life is acting as a catalyst and helping others do amazing things. Whether it is creating open source micro controllers, robot controller software, object sharing websites, or self replicating 3D printers there is one central purpose: to help other people help themselves create an awesome world to live in. He hopes that someday we can create a world that surpasses even the wildest futures portrayed in science fiction. I think the universe is and will continue to be completely rad. Do you want to help?

Jasper Speicher (Tellart LLC)

Holistic Service Prototyping: Sketching Hardware and Software

Jasper’s role as lead engineer at Tellart involves a variety of responsibilities including: designing, manufacturing, and testing digital and analog electronics; repurposing and “hacking” existing electronic systems for prototype design; researching and porting open source software for a variety of desktop and embedded environments; designing and testing code for user interfaces, basic DSP algorithms, and data networks, for various desktop, embedded, and mobile devices; performing on-site device installation and maintenance; designing, building and testing basic mechanical systems; managing engineering subcontractors for projects requiring expertise beyond the scope of the company; writing and illustrating proposals for work, on a variety of technical subjects, to be evaluated by non-technical clients; and maintaining direct relations with the company’s clients. When he isn’t working on consulting projects, Jasper participates in Tellart’s internal invention efforts.

Jasper received his BA from Brown University in Engineering and Visual Arts. He also completed a Masters degree in Computer Music and Multimedia at Brown. While pursuing his Masters degree, Jasper worked on grants at the Brown University SHAPE Lab, studying 3D shape processing and augmented-reality user-interfaces for creative software. He has taught Digital Sculpture and Industrial Design at Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design, and he has co-authored several academic papers published in international academic journals.

Chris Spurgeon (spurgeonworld.com)

How New Materials Change History

By day, Chris Spurgeon is a web developer. By night, Chris mucks about with obsolete technologies, investigates odd corners of the history of science and invention, builds high-powered rockets, and maintains the blog Spurgeonworld focusing on places where science and art meet.

Molly Steenson (Princeton University School of Architecture)

Shared and Sometimes Stealthy: Urban India's Mobile Phone

Molly Wright Steenson is a design and architectural researcher who studies interactivity, responsiveness, and mobility in architecture and is pursuing a PhD in architecture at Princeton University. Molly cut her teeth on social technology in 1992 and on the web in 1994. As a design researcher, her projects have included a study with Microsoft Research India on mobile phone sharing and for another major technology client, on how social networking technologies will change people’s friendships in China and the UK. Molly was Associate Professor of Connected Communities at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy and also was a co-founder of the groundbreaking women’s webzine, Maxi, in the 1990s. She blogs at Active Social Plastic and continues to work on design strategy for mobile, web, and urban-scale projects.

Andrea Vaccari (Senseable City Lab, MIT)

The Real Time City

Andrea Vaccari is research assistant at the Senseable City Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he is studying the integration of information and communication technologies in the built environment, and their implications in the social dynamics that drive city life itself. Throughout initiatives like WikiCity and the New York Talk Exchange, currently featured at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the laboratory aims to leverage the huge volume of real-time geo-referenced data provided by digital devices and sensor networks to better understand cities as real-time control systems, and to provide new tools to innovate and anticipate the effects of such innovations. Vaccari is currently completing his M.Sc. in computer engineering at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy and the joint program in computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Cherie Ve Ard (Two Steps Beyond)

Tales from Technomadia

Being a small business software entrepreneur and a heart filled with wanderlust, Cherie has always had a mobile working lifestyle in mind. It wasn’t a big leap for her to take her business on the road when the time came and completely leave behind a permanent home and office. Give her access to the internet, a little power and a laptop – and she’s all set.

Rose White (City University of New York - Graduate Center / NYC Resistor )

Collaborative Play: Improving the World by Making Fun Stuff with Smart People

John Wilbanks (Creative Commons)

Uncommon Knowledge and Open Innovation: Building a Science Commons

As VP of Science, John Wilbanks runs the Science Commons project at Creative Commons. He came to Creative Commons from a Fellowship at the World Wide Web Consortium in Semantic Web for Life Sciences. Previously, he founded and led to acquisition Incellico, a bioinformatics company that built semantic graph networks for use in pharmaceutical research & development. Previously, John was the first Assistant Director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and also worked in US politics as a legislative aide to U.S. Representative Fortney (Pete) Stark.

John holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Tulane University and studied modern letters at the Universite de Paris IV (La Sorbonne). He is a research affiliate at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the project on Mathematics and Computation. John also serves on the Advisory Boards of the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central, the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Open Knowledge Definition, and the International Advisory Board of the Prix Ars Electronica’s Digital Communities awards. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Fedora Commons digital repository organization.

Gary Wolf (Wired)

QS - From Personal Data to Self-Knowledge

Gary Wolf is a writer and contributing editor at Wired magazine, and the author of several books. One of the founding editors at HotWired (later Wired Digital) and Wired News, Wolf is the author of Wired – A Romance; Dumb Money: Adventures of a Day Trader (with Joey Anuff); and Aether Madness.

He received a bachelor’s degree from Reed College in 1983 and a master’s degree in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1986.

Among his many other Wired stories, Wolf is the author of “The Curse of Xanadu,” about Ted Nelson and Project Xanadu, and “The World According to Woz”, about Steve Wozniak.

Wolf lives in San Francisco, California.

New media start ups ramp up - Digital Media.net Aus

2009-01-06T13:52:00.000-08:00

http://www.digital-media.net.au/Article/New-media-start-ups-ramp-up/434129.aspx

Thursday 18 December 2008

New-media start-ups ramp up

Natalie Apostolou

Refugees from traditional publishing are turning up the heat as self styled new-media startups looking to bring entertainment and niche trade insights to wider more targeted audiences.

Entertainment site HitFix will launch in the US this week, founded by ex-Reed Business Information development execs Jen Wilhelmi Sargent and Arash Hadipanah and ex-Latimes.com and MSN.com film editor Gregory Ellwood, the startup offers the calendar application Forecast, which enables consumers to track and customize upcoming entertainment options based on their zip code and tastes. Last week the HitFix team made the rounds of studios to talk about advertising to their target 18-34 demo as well as access to new trailers, sets and talent.

HitFix also offers breaking movie news and blog content from Ellwood (whose blog will focus on awards coverage) and Ain't It Cool News reviewer Drew McWeeny (who retires his "Moriarty" moniker after 12 years), TV reporting from Zap2It's Daniel Fienberg, and music info from ex-Billboard music maven Melinda Newman. Sports will come online soon.

Editors will comment on newsfeeds supplied by the Associated Press. "There's a gap between the insider trades and the TMZ gossip side," Sargent said. "We're catering to consumers, like Entertainment Weekly."

HitFix has deals with partners Live Nation, Fandango, StubHub, Netflix and Amazon.com. Facebook and iPhone apps will launch in February, followed by other mobile devices such as BlackBerry.

Another team of Reed Business Information executives are also taking on the new media market down under targeting the media and marketing landscape with MuMbrella (www.mumbrella.com.au). The online venture is backed by former publisher of the RBI's Australian Media Group -which includes titles such as B&T, Encore, Digital Media and Professional Marketing - Martin Lane and the former and most recent Group Editor of the Media Group and editor of B&T magazine Tim Burrowes.

Back in the US , Wopular.com from Rotten Tomatoes co-founder Senh Duong has launched aggregating and presenting breaking news in a user-friendly interface. The site showcases constantly updated stories and a newspaper rack of RSS feeds from top media outlets. Ads, video and widgets will follow when traffic warrants it. "I'm like the editor of a newspaper picking interesting stories I think people should read," Duong said.

Wopular offers no original content or commentary (except from readers), but the price was right for Duong to launch this site by himself, with no staff, in one week: US$10.

DIGRA

2008-12-20T01:43:00.001-08:00

Digital Games Research Association

http://www.digra.org/join

4th Biennial Radiator Festival & Symposium: Exploits in the Wireless City

2008-12-19T23:42:00.001-08:00

the 4th Biennial Radiator Festival & Symposium: Exploits in the Wireless City which takes place between 13 - 24 January 2009, please find details below of the symposium I would like to invite you, your colleagues and students to. The focus of this symposium is on new developments in technology, communication architecture and hybrid spaces and its effects on our public and private spheres.

We feel that this would be a great opportunity for recent graduates, final year undergraduates and post-graduate students to participate as a delegate in the leading New Art Technology festivals in the UK. Themes under investigation include:

Wireless Networks or Gated Communities?

A wireless network is an ever shifting, dynamic, constant entity, with a combination of different topographies. They are difficult networks to map, measure or control. Since regulations of usage, frequencies and sharing are still in the process of being negotiated, how is access control and data manipulation being exposed, exploited, packaged and challenged?

Experiencing the E-City

Our mobility while we work, e-shop, or communicate in a wireless zone tends to make us nomadic and lets us adapt a particular space (café, park, home) to our momentary need. Spaces become multi-purpose, the workspace becomes unscheduled and deregulated. New clusters are generated. People, increasingly un-tethered from their workspaces, are nevertheless subject to more control and surveillance in an increasingly obscured manner. How does this distributed social space change people's experience of city?

The Networked City

From ambient technology such as RFID (radio frequency identification tags) to 'smart buildings', how is an increased computerisation of our environment impacting on our privacy? Are we on our way to ultimate surveillance? What possibilities for resistance do we have left?

Communication Architectures

New Social Networks and organisations come through websites, we make 'friends' with people on a suggestion, we work sat across the world from our colleagues. How has the transformation in social flow dynamics changed the usage of existing architectures?

What are the social impacts of digital communication technologies? Do communities, especially those under-represented in socio economic terms, stand to benefit from these new hybrid spaces?

Radiator and its Symposium will present work that combines an engagement with locality and community with an exploration into the possibilities of digital enhancement where the role of the city-as-communications-network is deep at its core.

Please forward this opportunity onto students, colleagues and contacts who you feel would benefit from this taking part in this event.

gen y / gen x

2008-12-15T17:48:00.001-08:00

generation y -

miptv 2009

2008-12-15T17:42:00.000-08:00

30 MARCH - 3 APRIL 2009 - PALAIS DES FESTIVALS, CANNES, FRANCE

Mostyle

2008-12-15T17:36:00.000-08:00

Mostyle is this....

Sorority Forever - Warner Bros - internet series

2008-12-15T17:28:00.000-08:00

Sorority Forever is an internet series from Warner Bros..

Also on myspacetv -

Digital Media au - editorial

2008-12-15T17:24:00.001-08:00

Cross-platform play: Do PC gamers want it?

2008-12-15T17:18:00.000-08:00

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/articlephp?id=165485

eNTERFACE09

2008-12-12T06:42:00.002-08:00

eNTERFACE'09 - 5th INTERNATIONAL SUMMER WORKSHOP ON MULTIMODAL INTERFACES
http://www.infomus.org/enterface09
July 13 - August 7, 2009 Casa Paganini - InfoMus Lab, DIST - University of Genova, Piazza Santa Maria in Passione 34, 16123 Genova, Italy www.casapaganini.org http://www.casapaganini.org

CALL OR PROJECT PROPOSALS Casa Paganini - InfoMus Lab, DIST - University of Genova, invites project proposals for eNTERFACE'09, the 5th summer workshop on multimodal interfaces, to be held in Genova, Italy, from July 13th to August 7th, 2009. Following the tremendous success of the previous eNTERFACE workshops (www.enterface.net ) held in Mons, Belgium (2005), Dubrovnik, Croatia (2006), Istanbul, Turkey (2007), and Paris, France (2008), eNTERFACE'09 aims at continuing and enhancing the tradition of collaborative, localized research and development work by gathering, in a single place, leading researchers in multimodal interfaces and students to work on specific projects for 4 complete weeks. eNTERFACE'09 will encompass presentation sessions, including tutorial state-of-the-art surveys on several aspects of design of multimodal interfaces, given by invited senior researchers, and periodical presentations of the results achieved by each project group. The ultimate goal is to make this event a unique opportunity for students and experts all over the world to meet and effectively work together, so as to foster the development of tomorrow's multimodal research community. Project submissions on all themes below are welcome. We particularly encourage interdisciplinary proposals covering several themes and proposals integrating the OpenInterface and/or the EyesWeb XMI platforms. THEMES We invite submissions on themes related to innovative multimodal interfaces including, but not restricted to: * Multimodal signal analysis and synthesis * Signal-level and meaning-level data fusion * Intuitive interfaces and personalized systems in real and virtual environments * User, context and semantics-aware self-learning and adapting systems * Multimodal conversational systems * Usability * Innovative modalities and modalities conversion * Multimodality for plasticity * Multimodality for biometrics and security * Edutainment and learning assistance * Medical applications * Embodied agents * Performing arts applications * Multimodal interfaces for mobile devices * Multimodal interfaces for embodied social experience of multimedia content * Affective Multimodal Interfaces for Digital Art and Entertainment * Multimodal Semantic Fusion * Open-Source Framework for Rapid Prototyping of Multimodal Interactive Applications IMPORTANT DATES * January 10th, 2009: Reception of a 1 page Notification of Interest, with a summary of project goals, work-packages, and deliverables; * January 31th, 2009: Reception of the complete project proposal in the format provided by the Author's kit available at http://www.infomus.org/enterface09; * February 15th, 2009: Notification of project acceptance; Publication of the Call for Participation; * March 20st, 2009: Closing of the Call for Participation; * March 30th, 2009: Publication of teams; * July 13th August 7th eNTERFACE'09 Workshop. Proposals should be submitted in PDF format to enterface09@casapaganini.org Proposals will be screened by the Scientific Committee for suitability to the workshop goals and format. A call for PhD students and researchers participation to projects will be launched on February 15th, 2009. Authors of the accepted proposals will then be invited to build their teams. FURTHER INFORMATION AND CONTACT For any further information/question/comment/suggestion, please visit the eNTERFACE'09 website at: http://www.infomus.org/enterface09 or send a message to the local organizing committee at enterface09@casapaganini.org

australia writers guide

2008-12-12T06:42:00.001-08:00

writer's guide to making a digital living

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRueQ1Q6NGA

"New writing universe "Is the literature game over or about to begin? Step inside this interactive 'New writing universe' and find the answer! " http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/writersguide

life's too short ads

2008-12-12T06:36:00.000-08:00

australia writers guide

2008-12-12T04:21:00.000-08:00

http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/writersguide

NMA - Nintendo blocks user chat on Bebo

2008-12-03T06:45:00.000-08:00

http://www.nma.co.uk/Articles/40656/Nintendo+blocks+user+chat+on+Bebo.html

reach students to learn by text

2008-12-02T07:20:00.002-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/digitalstudent/texting

Find and track i-phone apps

2008-12-02T07:20:00.001-08:00

http://www.apptism.com/

mobile marketing - slideshare

2008-12-01T05:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.slideshare.net/swamicrm/mobile-marketing?src=related_normal&rel=459696

brand -new marketing - content slideshow

2008-12-01T05:38:00.001-08:00

http://www.slideshare.net/helgetenno/content-marketing-brand-new-marketing

OReilly TOC - February 2008

2008-12-01T05:34:00.001-08:00

My TOC presentation - Feb 2008

links....

2008-12-01T05:26:00.000-08:00

www.swarmtribes.com

www.goodreads.com

www.cbs.com

www.wethinkthebook.net

Faintheart - Edinburgh International Film Fest - and on MySpace

www.hideandseek....

Social Web's Big Question - federate or aggregate...

2008-12-01T03:35:00.000-08:00

http://gigaom.com/2008/11/30/social-webs-big-question-federate-or-aggregate/

Inventor and tech-philosopher Dave Winer Twittered tonight that federation is the hot thing, pointing to a New York Times article about Facebook Connect. And just like that he touched upon the third rail of our increasingly social web. The big question facing the social web depends on the direction it needs to take. A sharp increase in the number of web services and social networks has many of us yearning for a single sign-on, which has lead to the idea of “federation.” On the flip side, we also want one place to manage our diverse web services in one place — aggregate. These two diametrically opposed views of how we are going to come to grips with our social web are going to face an intense debate until consumers vote with their clicks.
United Federation of The Social Web
Federation, as explained on Wikipedia, “describes the technologies, standards and use-cases which serve to enable the portability of identity information across otherwise autonomous security domains. The ultimate goal of identity federation is to enable users of one domain to securely access data or systems of another domain seamlessly, and without the need for completely redundant user administration.”
Facebook Connect, which was announced in May 2008 and is being rolled out this week, allows you to use your Facebook login to access Facebook’s partner web sites, then broadcast what you are doing on those sites to everyone on Facebook. It’s like Facebook Beacon — minus the marketing sleaziness. Partners include the Discovery Channel, the (irrelevant) genealogy network Geni, and (hot) video site Hulu.
“Everyone is looking for ways to make their Web sites more social,” Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer told The New York Times. “They can build their own social capabilities, but what will be more useful for them is building on top of a social system that people are already wedded to.” Of course, as I pointed out earlier, this is desperately important for the company to figure out how to make money. As a competitive matrix, here are some of other projects Facebook Connect is teeing off against: Google-sponsored Friend Connect, Open ID and MySpace’s Data Availability initiative.
HyperAggregate
On the flip side of federation is aggregation. There’s a small army of startups, such as FriendFeed and Ping.fm, that want to act as a dashboard for your entire social-web infrastructure. The latest startup to join the ranks is Power.com, a Rio de Janiero, Brazil-based startup that has until now operated in stealth and has raised $8 million in venture funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Esther Dyson. The company was started by Steve Vachani.
Vachani’s big idea is that you can come to the Power.com web site, log into and interact with all your social networks, as well as other web services. It is not the first startup of its kind. Several others — MyLifeBrand, Spokeo, Loopster and ProfileLinker — have walked down this road. What Power.com has done is use virality and focus on Orkut to get a big enough user base. Steve describes his service as “Facebook Connect for everything — an ultimate mashup platform” that connects to data from any service and allows Power.com users to interact with that information.
It works like this: You register all your web services and social networks on Power.com. Once you log on, you are automatically logged on everywhere that matters and you can easily go from Power.com to any one of your social networks with a single click. Your start page on Power.com (a stripped-down cross between Facebook’s start page and Netvibes) will show you all of your friends, messages and content — from all their social networks, soon from instant messengers and email accounts — in one place. All your friends, messages, updates, birthdays and photos from diverse social networks will be aggregated nicely together.
A Power “communicator” will allow you to send information to all your friends across networks with the ease of sending an email. “This is just like Meebo,” Steve insisted, where they log in to and constantly interact with the service. It doesn’t use any APIs, and all the magic happens using this technology developed by the company. Steve called it “intelligent proxy.” I have asked for more details to understand how exactly it works.
Power.com claims that all your information is going to be arranged by people not by discrete web destinations. Soon you will be able to use its dashboard to do everything on the web — or so it boldly hints in the press materials. The company claims it has 5 million registered users in Latin America and India and says it will hit 30 million by 2009. How it is claiming all these numbers and growth is a tad fuzzy.
Theoretically (and only theoretically) the idea of aggregating your web content and activites makes a lot of sense. Back in March 2007, in a column for Business 2.0, I wrote: “This is one of the hot opportunities in new new media: hyperaggregation. If aggregation is what we’ve seen so far on YouTube and Flickr, hyperaggregation is aggregating the aggregators…It’s impossible to keep up with dozens of social networks, millions of videos and thousands of blogs. ............

http://www.wethinkthebook.net/home.aspx

2008-11-25T13:49:00.000-08:00

Amb:IT:ion event - 24Nov08 - New Writing Partnership

2008-11-25T06:52:00.000-08:00

http://bookfutures.blogspot.com/
And yesterday I spoke at Writing Re:connected, a seminar organised by The New Writing Partnership in Norwich. Naomi Alderman, currently a reader of The Golden Notebook at www.thegoldennotebook.org, our other ACE funded Experiment in Reading, curated by Bob Stein. Naomi told me she kept checking the site during the day to see what response her latest posts were provoking. Naomi, Tim Wright and Alison Norrington each spoke inspirationally about their different versions of multi-platform fiction. the massive Alternate Reality Game Perplex City; Oldton, Tim's semi-fictitious hometown, and Alison's energetic promotion of Staying Single Sophie, a feisty piece of digitalchicklit involving Second Life, Bebo, Facebook, YouTube and Uncletomcobbley.com.The main theme of the day, organised by Chris Gribble and including an excellent presentation by Hannah Rudman, was how Literature Organisations can learn from projects like these to make creative networks of writers and readers. And I did my bit, which I may write up and post here, urging such organisations to seize the time while there IS still time to seize, and reconfigure their work in relation to the web. if:book will definitely be running training workshops and events for the literature sector from the new year, building on the work done by the FLO Consortium. Reader comments on what this should cover would be most appreciated.
Posted by Chris Meade at 08:29 0 comments
Labels: flo, literature, training

Links to my work/refs

2008-11-21T05:32:00.000-08:00

Fictional Blogging: Can Web 2.0 Translate to Publishing 2.0? -

http://en.oreilly.com/toc2008/public/schedule/detail/53

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;iel=4;view=text;idno=3336451.0011.209;rgn=main

Female Icons - De Geuzen - http://www.geuzen.org/female_icons/?cat=237

http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/26178/#48663

Poolbeg - http://www.poolbeg.com/Romantic-Fiction/Alison-Norrington/p-33-184/

CWMN - http://nlabnetworks.typepad.com/cwnm/2006/11/graduate-alison.html

Booksquare -- http://booksquare.com/what-have-you-done-for-me-lately/

Digital Livings - http://www.futureofthebook.org.uk/blog/?page_id=7

The Digitalist -http://thedigitalist.net/?p=231

Philly Inq - http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~sas38/reviews.html

http://www.thelalatheory.com/dig5.html

Universe Creation 101 - http://www.universecreation101.com/2007/06/cross-media-story-staying-single/

BlogHer - http://www.blogher.com/node/18759

Essex Book Festival 2006 - http://askchris.essexcc.gov.uk/Adult/favreaddetails.asp?BookID=3942&SelRev=0&Colour=Pink

IOCT Salon: Creative Writing and New Media Showcase, 18 June 2008 - http://www.vimeo.com/1668117?pg=embed&sec=1668117

New Writing Partnership - http://www.newwritingpartnership.org.uk/nwp/site/news.acds?context=747585&instanceid=4946728&year=2008&month=3

A Million Penguins - The Guardian blog - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2007/mar/12/livingwithamillionpenguins

http://www.dmu.ac.uk/faculties/humanities/postgraduate-courses/courses/ma-creative-writing-new-media/ma-creative-writing-new-media-student-case-studies.jsp

TES - Lemony Snicket - http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=2287418

TES - Wiki man http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=2366537

Pitchfork media blog - http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/46941-column-get-that-out-of-your-mouth-40

Queens Theatre - http://www.queens-theatre.co.uk/education/writers'groups.htm

Independent on Sunday - sue thomas - http://travelsinvirtuality.typepad.com/suethomas/2008/09/theres-a-snippe.html
Digital Literature Reconnected - http://digitalliteraturereconnected.blogspot.com/2008/11/heres-alison.html
New Writing International - blog novels - the definitive list - http://newwritinginternational.com/blog-novels-the-definitive-list/
The Independent - can literature survive - http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/books-special-can-intelligent-literature-survive-in-the-digital-age-926545.html
The Digitalist - http://thedigitalist.net/?p=231

IASPR - International Association of Popular Romance Studies

2008-11-20T07:57:00.001-08:00

http://cfp.english.upenn.edu/archive/Gender-Studies/1236.html

PCA / ACA National Conference: New Orleans, April 8-11, 2009 (Conference info: http://pcaaca.org/conference/national.php)
CALL FOR PAPERS: Romance Fiction
We are considering proposals for individual papers, sessions organized around a theme, and special panels featuring authors or editors. Sessions are scheduled in one-hour slots, ideally with four papers or speakers per standard session. Should you or any of your colleagues be interested in submitting a proposal or have any questions, please contact one or both of the area chairs (see below). Please feel free to forward, cross-post, or link to this call for papers. We are interested in any and all topics about or related to romance fiction: all genres, all kinds, and all eras.
Some possible topics (although we are not limited to these):
--Individual Novels or Authors --New Directions in Romance Scholarship (historicist, formalist, post- colonial, queer-theoretical, etc.) --Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Romance, and same-sex love within predominantly heterosexual texts --Genre-Bending and Genre-Crossing authors and texts (erotic romance, SF romance, chick-lit, urban fantasy, highbrow / lowbrow crossover texts, etc.) --African-American, Latina, Asian, and other Multicultural romance --Young Adult Romance and Chick-lit (series, novels, authors, communities) --Category Romance (its past history, recent and forthcoming lines, changing demographics, etc.) --History of Romance Fiction and its major subgenres (major authors and texts, turning points in the development of the genre or any subgenre) --Romance and Region: places, histories, mythologies, traditions --Romance on the World Stage (texts in translation; romance manga; non- Western writers, readers, and publishers; local, national, and multinational publishing) --Romance communities and the Romance Industry: authors, readers, publishers, websites, blogs
If you are a romance author or editor and are interested in speaking on your own work or on developments in the romance genre, please contact us!
As we did last year in San Francisco, the Romance Fiction area will meet in a special Open Forum to discuss upcoming conferences, work in progress, and the future of the field. Of particular interest this year: the new International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR) with its affiliated scholarly publication, Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS)!
Submit a one-page (150-250 word) proposal or abstract (via regular mail or e-mail) by November 30, 2008, to the Area Chairs in Romance:
Eric Selinger Dept. of English DePaul Univ. 802 West Belden Ave. Chicago, IL 60614 773-325-4475 eselinge_at_depaul.edu
Darcy Martin Women's Studies East Tennessee State University (423) 439-6311 martindj_at_etsu.edu

The 11th Annual Games Festival

2008-11-20T07:37:00.000-08:00

http://www.igf.com/

Selling Social Marketing to CFOs

2008-11-20T04:43:00.001-08:00

November 6, 2008

Selling Social Marketing to CFOs

As Sam Decker writes, justifying spending on word of mouth and social media marketing to CFOs is often a tough job for marketers. As we head into a leaner economy, this task may become even more difficult. And it's no wonder - of course it's hard to be taken seriously while claiming that a collection of intangibles with names like Twitter, Yammer, Flickr, Yelp, Zoomr, Pownce, widgets, blogs, wikis, and so on can add up to real value. But that doesn't mean that social media marketing isn't a priority. In fact, in an environment in which marketing budgets are closely watched, social marketing may become more crucial than ever, given that "capital expenditures necessary for social marketing are often minimal compared to other forms of marketing." How can marketers get this point across to CFOs? Decker has provided us with 8 simple tips. It's all about hard data, proven value, and tangible results, and establishing that, silly names aside, social media is more than a passing fad - it's here to stay.

The Week's Most-Read Posts
How Social Media Changed the U.S. Presidential Election
Are You A Confident Leader?
8 Tips for Selling Social Marketing to CFOs
Difficult Conversations for Business Partners
Evolving or Forking OpenID
Live Webcast - Sustaining Growth in a Tough Economy
It’s no secret that many businesses are being squeezed by a slower economy. Even as many companies struggle, however, better prepared ones can thrive in tough times. Learn how to “weather the economic storm" by tuning in to a free, expert-led webcast sponsored by SAP. Join a group of distinguished experts to discuss proven strategies and practical tips on how to sustain growth in a leaner economy. Click here for more information.

In our first webcast, panelists Chad Moutray, Barbara Weltman, and Scott Webster explored ways to lower operating costs without hurting your business. You can listen the full length of the discussion here.

Click Here to Register Now – Next Webcast November 20!
Live Webcast #3: Think Different: Find New Ways to Grow Your Business ( November 20, 2008 – 1:00 p.m. ET)

Convergence 2008: The Roundtables - Special Discount for MVP Readers
Advertising, marketing, pr, and media are converging, involving the interlocking of computing and information technology companies, telecommunications networks, content providers, and agencies. Across the industry the lines between fields are blurred. PR, advertising, marketing and media departments are working together on cross functional teams and are no longer individual silos. This conference will gather the best and brightest minds to explore how the communications industry is converging.
For additional information and registration, please visit www.bdionline.com/ convergence2008. Use promo code SMT for discounted rate of $145.
Event Details: Date: Wednesday, November 12, 2008Time: 8:30 AM - 12:00 PMLocation: The Graduate Center/CUNY: 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016Registration Fee: $195Website:http://www.bdionline.com/ convergence20
Roundtable Moderators:
Kimberly Bayer, Vice President, Alternative Investments Services, J.P. MorganDan Burstein, Managing Partner, Millennium Technology Ventures David D. Burstein, Founder and Executive Director, I'm 18 in 08Robin Carey, CEO and Cofounder, Social Media Today Sawsato Das, Director, Global Media Relationship, SAPMatt DeLoca, SVP, Sales & Marketing, The FeedRoomJeremy Dickstein, Director of Business Development Communications, Citi Smith BarneyAndrew Fox, Senior Manager, Global Communications, AMDAdrienne Garland, VP Marketing, PR NewswireJohn Greenberg, President, GoodmindTodd Grossman, VP, MultiVuMelissa Keklak, PR Manager, Casio AmericaRuss Mann, CEO, Covario, Inc.Kris Oser, Director of Strategic Communications, eMarketerKirsten Paragona, Director External Communications, HCL AmericaLinda Recupero, EVP, Public Affairs, HSBC BankSteve Rubel, Author, Micropersuasion Blog and Senior Vice President, Director of Insights, Edelman DigitalLisa Witter, COO, Fenton Communications

Other Social Media Today LLC Communities - Leading Business Conversations

new platform!!

2008-11-20T04:42:00.001-08:00

If you haven't already played: http://www.wordle.net generates 'word clouds' from your text

Mashers Wanted -

2008-11-20T04:40:00.000-08:00

http://writerresponsetheory.org/wordpress/2008/11/18/mashers-wanted-mad-hatters-and-bunk-collide-121-2109/
Bunk Magazine and Mad Hatters' Review have extended their call for mashers for their upcoming mash-up issue (April 1, 2009)Please contact the editors if you would like to: mash the works of poetry or fiction that have already been accepted mash your own (Deadline: Feb. 1. 2009)"Mashing" here applies to most of the work created by ELO artists, especially those that appropriate and mix together found-content and forms.Send queries to: madbunkers@gmail.comMore information is here:http://writerresponsetheory.org/wordpress/2008/11/18/mashers-wanted-mad-hatters-and-bunk-collide-121-2109/Or contact me for more information.Best,Mark Marino--Writing ProgramUniversity of Southern Californiahttp://WriterResponseTheory.org http://CriticalCodeStudies.com

Mum's the word - Mapping Maternal Subjectivities

2008-11-20T04:38:00.000-08:00

we are on the look out for digital fiction projects as well as discussions about the digital and the maternal - mommy-bloggers, etc. Deadline for proposals is 1 December, conference itself is 9 January 09 at DMU. best - Kate P.S. - If you'd like to attend without submitting a proposal, that's fine too. Note student discount!

Mum’s the Word: The maternal in contemporary literature MaMSIE (Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics), School of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London and the Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University Friday, 9 January, 2009
Call for participants mamsiedmu@googlemail.com
This day-long workshop aims to provide an interdisciplinary space to map, debate and discuss configurations of maternal in contemporary literature. It will combine invited keynote speakers with a call for participants. Topics may include: • the analysis and exploration of developing genres such as the ‘momoir’ and other autobiographical approaches to writing maternal experience and their intersections with auto/biography and life writing as feminist research strategies; • the politics of the transformation from chick-lit to mum-lit; • shifting representations of ‘bad mothers’ in literature from the 1970’s to the present; • assisted reproductive technologies in relation to feminist utopias; • literary engagements with cloning and the ‘end’ of generation; • literatures of pregnancy and birth including literatures of ‘failed’ maternity; • the maternal in digital fiction and other digital genres such as blogging ‘Mums the word’ represents the fourth event in a series hosted by MaMSIE which creates spaces for interdisciplinary conversations about the maternal across different knowledge and practice communities including feminism, psychoanalysis, social science, philosophy, visual and performance art and literature and creative writing. MaMSIE aims to open up and sustain critical debates about the maternal understood in its ethicopolitical, psychosocial, relational and practice dimensions and explore the unique site the maternal occupies at the potent intersection between scientific possibilities, psychosocial practices and cultural representations. This workshop is designed to provide interdisciplinary spaces for discussion rather than the formal presentation of papers. We are therefore asking prospective participants to submit 250 words describing their work and their interest in the themes of the workshop so that the organizers can group participants into coherent panels and discussion groups. If you would like to respond to this call for participants, please send your 250-word description to mamsiedmu@googlemail.com by 1 December, 2008. ‘Mum’s the Word’ will take place at De Montfort University, Leicester, on 9 January, 2009. Registration will cost £30/£10 for students. Lunch will be provided.

Returnity - "Digital comes of age in economic downturn"

2008-11-20T04:25:00.002-08:00

Hot on everyone's lips at the moment is talk of the economic downturn and the implications it will have on businesses globally. Often one of the first divisions to see a cut back is marketing, providing many of our clients with cause for concern. In response to some frequently asked questions, this first in a two part newsletter examines how the economy has affected marketing strategy and the tactics marketers are employing to weather the storm. Key findings:
Although cut-backs have been seen in one-third of large organisations, many companies have no plans to reduce marketing efforts and some are looking to increase marketing expenditure.
Marketers are reassessing their strategies, moving to more cost-effective, measurable channels.
It's not all bad news marketers are seeing real results from strategy changes that have enabled brands to connect with consumers in a new way.

Looking towards 2009, there is an expectation that the low cost of email will drive higher volumes and increased usage by marketers during the economic downturn. This will undoubtedly create more competition at the inbox. Organisations that use email successfully through this period will be those that practice email marketing responsibly and efficiently - through close attention to personalisation, creative customisation, needs-based segmentation, and insightful list management. Not to be missedIn next week's newsletter, we will look at best practice and key success factors for e-marketing in these challenging times. If you are not already on our mailing list, subscribe here.New strategic partnership Returnity has recently become an implementation partner of Omniture the leading web analytics solution in Australia. For more information on how you can integrate web analytics into your email marketing strategy please contact Returnity.

http://images.optin.com.au/returnity/20081119/Marketing_in_an_economic_downturn1.pdf

E-commerce Site Is Dominating Digital Mommyhood

2008-11-20T04:25:00.001-08:00

http://adage.com/digitalalist/article?article_id=125674

Digital A-List 2008: No. 7, J&J's BabyCenter
E-commerce Site Is Dominating Digital Mommyhood
By Jack Neff Published: March 17, 2008 In a contrarian move worthy of Warren Buffett, Johnson & Johnson in 2001 scooped up BabyCenter from the bankruptcy proceedings of retailer eToys for a bargain-basement $10 million. It became an investment in dominating digital mommyhood.
Tina Sharkey, chairman of BabyCenter
Photo Credit: Steve MallerBabyCenter would have ranked as the most heavily trafficked package-goods brand site in a 2007 study by ComScore, but the measurement company decided it was really an e-commerce and media site. Despite growing competition, BabyCenter reaches 78% of pregnant women and mothers of children up to 24 months in the U.S., said Carlos Gottschalk, group chairman of J&J's baby global business unit, at a 2007 investor conference. But U.S. online success no longer suffices. BabyCenter is aiming for global domination and to follow moms beyond the confines of its website. That's where Tina Sharkey comes in. J&J recruited her in January 2007 to be chairman of BabyCenter. She came from AOL, where she'd spent nearly five years running social-media and women's-programming initiatives. She's been busy, to say the least. BabyCenter last year launched new sites for India and China in addition to Spanish-language web and mobile sites for the U.S. Hispanic market. This year comes BabyCenter's first Arabic site, now in open beta test, and expansion into Latin America. "The moms coming online today were born online," Ms. Sharkey says. "They're as comfortable online as I was at the mall." BabyCenter inhabits what, certainly for package-goods marketers, is the most lucrative life stage. It also brings J&J some unmatched expertise in the growing area of online search for package-goods brands. It manages about 20,000 keywords and maintains a constantly updated 60,000-mom panel for market research. And as digital media become a growing slice of marketers' budgets, J&J knows it's not only participating in the revolution but also profiting from it.

e-mergence

kyte.tv - Staying Single to be broadcast

Jeff Gomez' 8 defining characteristics of a transmedia produciton - 2007

Vid Lit

The Rosetta Project

Fifty to ninety percent of the world's languages are predicted to disappear in the next century, many with little or no significant documentation.

Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era

INTERNET-AGEWRITING SYLLABUS ANDCOURSE OVERVIEW.

BY ROBERT LANHAM

MIPTV - Disney Interactive's Cindy Rose delivers eye-opening keynote

Siemens enable interactive tv

itsmy launches personal mobile broadcasting

I Had No Idea My Phone Could Do That - Hearst Mobile

Multi Platform presentation from Mike Dicks

The Late Fragment - interactive film

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Columbia University & Sense Networks

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Institute for the Future

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”Live,” digital media, interactivity, and narrative

UK women's online behaviour

IPC MEDIA DOWNLOADS UK WOMEN'S ONLINE BEHAVIOUR WITH ORIGIN PANEL 'WOMEN'S SPACE' RESEARCH

AOP appoints head of Research & Insight

AOP appoints Head of Research and Insight

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