Nov
12
MIT Futures of Entertainment
By
The MIT Futures of Entertainment is meeting in Cambridge, November 21 and 22. This is year 3.
You can get all the details here. Hope to see you there. Please do say hi.
Here's how the MIT website describes the event:
Convergence culture has moved swiftly from buzzword to industry logic. The creation of transmedia storyworlds, understanding how to appeal to migratory audiences, and the production of digital extensions for traditional materials are becoming the bread and butter of working in the media.Futures of Entertainment 3 once again brings together key industry leaders who are shaping these new directions in our culture and academic scholars immersed in the investigation the social, cultural, political, economic, and technological implications of these changes in our media landscape.
And that was the stunning thing last year for me, seeing the an idea that has been for some time a bee in the MIT bonnet, Jenkins' idea of convergence culture, was now fundamental to the way in which many players in Hollywood now see their work.
Here are some of the people involved:
- Kim Moses - Executive Producer The Ghost Whisperer
- John Caldwell - UCLA, Production Culture (Duke University Press)
- Henry Jenkins - MIT, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (NYU Press)
- Yochai Benkler - Harvard Law School, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale University Press)
- Rishi Dean - Vice President Product Strategy, Visible Measures
- Anne White - VP Programming & Creative, PRN by Thomson
- Anita Elberse - Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Marketing unit at Harvard Business School
- Sabrina Calouri - Director, Marketing and Promotions of HBO online
- Renée Ann Richardson - Harvard Business School
- Alex McDowell - Production Designer, Watchmen
- Kevin Slavin - Area/Code
- Grant McCracken - Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture(Indiana University Press)
- Robert Ferrari - Vice President of Business Development, Turbine Inc.
- Amanda Lotz - University of Michigan, The Television Will be Revolutionized (NYU Press)
- Gail De Kosnik - UC Berkeley, The Survival of Soap Opera: Strategies for a Digital Age (With Sam Ford and C. Lee Harrington)
- Joe Marchese - socialvibe.com
- Amber Case - Cyborg Anthropologist and Social Media Consultant, Hazelnut Consulting
- Maurício Mota - Director of Strategy and Business Development, 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(Wiley-Blackwell)
- 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
- Tom Boland - Director of Interactive Marketing, World Wrestling Entertainment
- Tom Casiello - Daytime Emmy Award-Winning former writer of As the World Turns, One Life to Live, Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless
- Peter Kim - Dachis Corporation
2 Comments
November 13th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
See you there, Grant!
Sue (the entertainment anthropology student)
November 20th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Mr. McCracken,
I had the pleasure of meeting you at the Interesting NY Conference, I work for Sterling Cooper Advertising in the mail room. I just wanted to let you know, in the hopes you would let your friends know as well (through the grapevine), that on December 8th I'll be releasing a sorta autobiography and behind the curtain look at how I and others here in the office communicated with the future. Anyone can send me an electronic mail and I'll be sure to drop a copy of the whole report in their mailbox first thing that morning, before anywhere else.
I'm sorry I won't be able to say hello again at the Futures of Entertainment conference, you see I was in a bit of an accident a few weeks past and had to cut my hours back and well, long story short, Mr. Cooper isn't letting me out of the office again anytime soon.
Thanks!