As of this morning, registration is officially open for the third Futures of Entertainment conference, November 21 and 22, here at MIT.
For those of you who haven't attended Futures of Entertainment before, the conference is organized around panel discussions, bringing academics and industry thought leaders together to dig into the topics at hand. You can check out the panels from the 2007 event here. This year's conference will cover topics including understanding the reconfiguring site of media value, uncovering, working with and understanding audiences, global distribution flows in light of the Internet and migratory audiences, the convergence taking place in the comics industry, franchising, extensions and world-building, as well as the challenges of bringing the academy and industry together.
Speakers this year include Kim Moses - Executive Producer, The Ghost Whisperer, Javier Grillo-Marxuach - The Middleman, Lost, Medium, John Caldwell - UCLA, Production Culture (Duke University Press), Henry Jenkins - MIT, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (NYU Press), Alex McDowell - Production Designer, The Watchmen, Kevin Slavin - Area/Code, Grant McCracken - Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture (Indiana University Press), Donald K Ranvaud - Buena Onda Films, Amanda Lotz - University of Michigan, The Television Will be Revolutionized (NYU Press), Gail De Kosknik - UC Berkeley, How to Save Soap Opera: Histories and Futures of an Iconic Genre, Joe Marchese - socialvibe.com, Amber Case - Cyborg Anthropologist and Social Media Consultant, Hazelnut Consulting, Mauricio Mota - New Content (Brazil), Alisa Perren - Georgia State University, The Media Industry Studies Book (Blackwell Publishing), Sharon Ross - Columbia College Chicago, Beyond the Box: Television and the Internet (WileyBlackwell), Nancy Baym - University of Kansas, Personal Connections in a Digital Age (Polity Press), Alice Marwick - New York University, Vu Nguyen - VP of Business Development, crunchyroll.com, Lance Weiler - Director Head Trauma and The Last Broadcast, Gregg Hale - Producer Seventh Moon and The Blair Witch Project
The conference runs over Friday and Saturday, November 21 and 22, here on the MIT campus in Cambridge. Registration for last year's conference filled quickly, so make sure you don't miss out.
