It might only be August now, but here at C3 we are all about November these days; more specifically November 20th and 21st when we'll be hosting our fourth annual Futures of Entertainment Conference (FOE) in the Bartos Theater right here at MIT. This is our biggest public event of the year and a unique opportunity to bring together some of the most influential minds in media industries and academia.
FOE is neither an academic or an industry conference, it is not a place for pitches or for presenting a paper, but rather, it's a space for in depth discussion about issues that are of interest to us all, a place for us to imagine together what diverse futures might look like. Drawing industry and academic speakers together with researchers from the Convergence Culture Consortium, Futures of Entertainment 4 provides a unique opportunity to participate in dynamic discussions about the future entertainment and media landscape. Organized around a "talk-show" style model, with panelists participating in moderated discussions about key issues affecting the future of the culture and creative industries, Futures of Entertainment 4 brings clever thinkers from both industry and the academy together for long conversations. Over the last three years this has produced deep, thorough treatments of issues ranging from the ethics of social media, effective strategies for participating in virtual worlds, the future of media metrics and measurement, and the challenges of building compelling transmedia experiences.
This year, FOE will dedicate and entire day to discussing transmedia creation. We are now beyond the point where it's necessary to define what transmedia is, rather we'd like to explore the creative and business processes behind it, engaging with questions around managing, producing, financing and positioning transmedia efforts, as well as how to identify the value they create.
On the second day of the conference we'll focus on some of the other issues that have long been part of Convergence Culture Consortium's research agenda, such as fan activism, contemporary media business models, and the progressive blurring of distinctions between communication mediums.
If you want to stay up to date on the latest FOE-related news please visit http://futuresofentertainment.org/ or follow us on our brand new twitter account @futuresof. And remember on November 20th and 21st Cambridge is the place to be.
