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Fifth Annual Games for Change Festival at Parsons The New School for Design

New York, NY

June 2-4, 2008

Fifth Annual Games for Change FestivalJune 2-4 2008

Proudly Sponsored by

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Festival Background

Welcome to the fifth annual Games for Change Festival! This year’s festival brings together innovators from the game industry, education, government, philanthropy, and non-profit sector to explore how games can change our lives and our world. Our panels include many of the leading thinkers in social issue game design, research, and practice, as well as leaders in related fields. This year we have added to the festival a day-long workshop on the fundamentals of social issue games specifically to a s s i s t t h e m a n y n o n p r o fi t organizations new to digital games. We are also proud to host another Festival Expo Night featuring some of the latest outstanding social issue games. Games for Change actively explores and promotes social issue games around the world throughout the year—at conferences, in the media, and through our own initiatives. This year, in partnership with Parsons the

New School, we launched PETLab—a public interest game design and research lab for interactive media Prototyping, Evaluation, Teaching, and Learning. We continued working with our Microsoft partners during the year on the Xbox 360 Games for Change Challenge, whose winners will be selected next month. We also w o r k e d c l o s e l y w i t h t h e E n t e r t a i n m e n t C o n s u m e r s Association and the Save the Internet Coalition on the net neutrality initiative. Our social issues games list and regional Games for Change chapters continued providing lively forums on a broad range of social issue game topics.

Organizationally, we are growing as well. This year Games for Change incorporated as its own nonprofit organization, with a small and dedicated staff and a distinguished group of advisors and board members helping us along the way.

We give a special thanks to our returning Festival Expo Night sponsor the Microsoft Corporation. We also welcome our new festival supporters, the AMD Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. As always, we extend our gratitude to

The New School for all the support they provide in putting on this festival.

We appreciate the extensive feedback we heard from last year’s attendees and hope that this year’s festival meets many of your needs and wishes. We will continue to work with you to further this field and hope that the festival informs and inspires your work throughout the year.

“We are convinced that games have the power to make a powerful and positive impact on the world today.”

Suzanne Seggerman - President and Cofounder Games for Change

Join our Listserv:http://www.gamesforchange.org/info/lists

A game for change is a digital game which engages a contemporary social issue to foster a more equitable, just and/or tolerant society.

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Lucy Bernholz, Founder and President, Blueprint Research & Design

Alan Gershenfeld, Managing Partner, E-Line Ventures

Franklin Madison, Technology Program Director, Industrial Technology Assistance Corporation

Dave Rejeski, Director, Foresight and Governance Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Suzanne Seggerman, Cofounder and President, Games for Change

Alex Quinn, Executive Director, Games for Change

Ian Bogost, Associate Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology; Founding Partner, Persuasive Games

Malika Dutt, Founder and Executive Director, Breakthrough

Rafael Fajardo, Director, SWEAT Collaborative; Associate Professor, Director, Digital Media Studies, University of Denver

Barry Joseph, Director, Online Leadership Program, Global Kids

Katie Salen, Executive Director, Institute of Play; Associate Professor, Design and Technology Department, Parsons The New School for Design

Ben Sawyer, Codirector of the Serious Games Initiative; Cofounder of Digitalmill

Adrian Sexton, Executive Vice President, Digital, Participant Media

Eric Zimmerman, Cofounder & Chief Design Officer, Gamelab

Games for Change

Board of Directors National Advisory Group

Games for Change666 Broadway, Suite 825

New York, NY 10012212-228-7855

www.gamesforchange.org

Contact: contactg4c@gamesforchange.org

Join our listserv: http://www.gamesforchange.org/info/lists

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8am • Breakfast

8:30am • Opening remarks – Alex Quinn, Executive Director, Games for Change

8:45am • Games for Change of the 20th Century – A conversation with Jim Gasperini (Hidden Agenda) and Chris Crawford (Balance of the Planet and Balance of Power) Chris and Jim will discuss their making of these first “games for change” in the late 1980s – the environment in which these inspiring games launched and how things have changed since then. Moderated by Celia Pearce

9:30am • Journalism, Games and Civic Engagement—this panel will explore the issues and challenges of the emerging interest and intersection of journalism in social issue games and civic engagement. Panelists include Nora Paul, Institute for New Media Studies, University of Minnesota; Ben Sawyer, Digital Mill and Serious Games Initiative; Joellen Easton, American Public Media; Asi Burak, Impact Games; Gerard LaFond (respondent); moderated by Heather Chaplin, journalist and author of Smartbomb.

This panel has been generously supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

10:30am • Break

11:00am • Values@Play at Work in the Classroom Values@Play is an NSF-funded research project that seeks to harness the power of videogames in the service of humanistic principles. The panel includes game scholars and professors who have integrated the curriculum and exercises created through this project in game design classrooms as well as students who have used the tools to create their own games for change. Panelists: Mary Flanagan, Tiltfactor Lab, Hunter College; Tracy Fullerton, USC; Celia Pearce, Georgia Tech; Jamie Antonisse, Hush game; Devon Johnson, Hush game; PETLab, Parsons

12:00pm – 1:30pm • Lunch (For those interested, Mary Flanagan’s Grow-A-Game workshop in the Lang Student Center, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd Floor)

1:30pm • ARGS for Change Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) harness large groups of players working towards a common goal.  How can we harness this “hive mind” to approach messy real world issues in addition to the neat narrative puzzles of traditional ARGs?  How might the game mechanics evolve to effectively embrace social issues?  Panelists

include:  Jordan Weisman, 42Entertainment; Frank Lantz, Area Code; Ken Eklund, WriterGuy, World Without Oil; Moderated By Peggy Weil, USC Interactive Media Division

2:15pm • Using XNA Game Studio to Change the World – of Games: Chris Satchell, General Manager and Chief XNA Architect, Microsoft Corporation

2:45pm • G4C does TED: 10 minutes each from key voices in the field: Suzanna Samstag, Global Contents Forum and G4C Seoul Regional leader; Cindy Poremba, digital media theorist, Concordia University; Ken Perlin, Dept. of Computer Science and Media Research Laboratory, NYU; Wendy Cohen, Manager of Community and Alliances, Participant Media

3:30pm • Break

4:00pm • Gaming the Class:  Want to get serious about using games to change the world but just don’t have a budget? David Thomas, UC Denver, and Justin Hollander, Tufts University discuss the use of off-the-shelf and Web-based videogames to teach students about urban planning and design, and engage them on subjects such as equity and fairness, the public’s interest in property, the need for cooperation, and the social contest that underlies the ways our cities form. Using games such as SimCity, Dice Wars and Carcassonne, find out how two instructors have found a low-cost—and compelling—way to immerse their students in complex issues.

4:30pm • Keynote conversation with Jim Gee and Henry Jenkins, introduced by Colleen Macklin, Director of PETLab and Chair of CDT Parsons, The New School for Design

At Lang Student Center, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd Floor:6 – 8pm • Expo Night – Microsoft Corporation and Corporate Vice President Jeff Bell invite you to spend the evening seeing some of the Imagine Cup 2008 finalists from the Xbox 360 Games for Change Challenge, as we show you the games they built, imagining a world where technology actually enables a sustainable environment. And check out some of the newest G4Cs from Parsons' PETLab, the UN, USC’s EA Innovation Lab, and many others.

Agenda - Tuesday, June 3At Tishman Auditorium; 66 W. 12th St.

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At various NYC locations (please see www.gamesforchange.org/bwiki to register):8 – 10am • Birds of a Feather Breakfasts

At Tishman Auditorium; 66 W. 12th St.:

10:00am • Measuring Impact: This panel explores evaluation strategies and techniques to capture and measure the impact of social issue games. Panelists will explore how social issue game evaluation is situated within other research on youth-created social issue media and within our understanding of social change in general. Panelists include Shelly Pasnik, Director of EDC’s Center for Children; Karin Hillhouse, Director of Changemaker Partnerships at Ashoka; Fran C. Blumberg, Coordinator of the Educational Psychology Program at Fordham University; Ellen LaPointe, Hopelab (respondent). Moderated by Alex Quinn, Executive Director, Games for Change.

11:00am • Funding Perspectives: New challenges are arising from the philanthropic sector as foundations explore how to fund the emerging use of games in the public interest. What are their current initiatives, goals and constraints? What can the community do to assist their work? Hear from the organizations taking the lead in supporting our community’s efforts, panelists include: Connie Yowell of the MacArthur Foundation, Jessica Goldfin of the Knight Foundation, Dr. Arlene de Strulle of the National Science Foundation; Bradford Lewis (respondent). Moderated by Lucy Bernholz of Blueprint Research and Design.

11:45am • It’s Elementary: The use of public media to engage elementary-aged students in social issues: Is there an audience that is too young for social-impact games? This panel of children's media developers advises that if children are interested in the computer, then they are likely old enough to start learning socially aware behaviors. Our discussion will review the ups and downs of their experiences creating children's games and websites that feature topics such as environmental awareness, global citizenship, media literacy, and civic responsibility.  Carla Fischer, Teachers College Columbia University; Emily Reardon, Sesame Workshop; Bill Shribman, WGBH; Silvia Lovato, PBS KIDS GO

12:30pm • Corporation for Public Gaming. Michael Levine of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center will

briefly discuss the work of the new center as well as a new collaboration with Serious Games and Games for Change.

12:45pm • Lunch • Open It Up: Frank Lantz and Karen Sideman will reprise their open discussion with the community. This years debate will dance around the idea that games for change are diminished – both as experiences and as directed communications - to the degree that they are maximized as message delivery mechanisms rather than complex and balanced systems in their own right. To stimulate discussion Lantz and Sideman will report on “deep play” experiences with well-known social issue games. They will have played these repeatedly, the way hardcore gamers play A-list console titles, and will discuss whether their understanding of, and relationship with, the games’ “content” deepened over time.

2:15pm • Moving Markets: Game industry professionals talk about the challenges and opportunities in making market-competitive, profitable games that also have a meaningful social impact. Panelists include: Robert Nashak, Vice President Worldwide Casual Studios, Electronic Arts; Richard Lemarchand, Game Designer, Naughty Dog; Christophe Watkins, Executive Producer, Artificial Mind and Movement; Austin Hill, CEO, Akoha. Moderated by former SVP of Activision Studios, Alan Gershenfeld.

3:15pm • Fresh Perspectives: Youth-Created Games for Change.  How do we actively engage young people from underserved communities in creating games for social change?  This panel features Rafael Fajardo, University of Denver (La Migra, Crossing); Zakiyyah Kareem, GirlStart; Barry Joseph, Global Kids (Ayiti: The Cost of Life, Hurricane Katrina game-in-progress). Moderated by David Kirkpatrick, Fortune Magazine

This panel has been generously funded by the AMD Foundation.

4:15pm • Break

4:30pm • Opening Remarks, Bob Kerrey, President, The New School, introduced by Suzanne Seggerman, President and Co-Founder, Games for Change

Closing Keynote: The Honorable Justice Sandra Day O’Connor

Agenda - Wednesday, June 4

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Expo Night is an evening reception where festival-goers can play games, meet each other, and enjoy food and drink in a lively and informal atmosphere. It will be held on Tuesday

June 3, from 6 to 8pm, at the Lang Center.

Jeff Bell invites you to join us for a sneak peek of the Imagine Cup 2008 Game Development finalist entries from the Xbox 360 Games for Change Challenge. This year,

Microsoft is calling upon students to create a game that is not only entertaining but socially responsible as well. These students are imagining a world where technology enables a

sustainable environment, and you get to see their games before anyone else, as they travel the road to the Imagine Cup Finals in Paris this summer.

We will also showcase the latest prototypes from our new lab launched in fall 2007—PETLab—about issues such as malaria prevention, nutrition, and carbon footprints.

Visitors will also be invited to play the newest games from our community, including games on immigration, Hurricane Katrina and playing the news.

And finally, don't miss the UN Games Table where representatives of the United Nations will be on hand to show and discuss a variety of games from their many important

programs around the world.

Expo NightSponsored by Microsoft

Brought to you by

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Jamie Antonisse is entering his final year as a master's student in USC's Interactive Media program. Before coming to California in 2006, he worked as a 3rd grade teacher and screenwriter in New York City. Aside from his efforts in designing and coding Hush, he has worked on several other USC projects, including writing and design for The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom and application development for the Institute for Creative Technologies.

Lucy Bernholz is the Founder and President of Blueprint Research & Design, Inc. a strategy consulting firm that helps philanthropic individuals and institutions achieve their missions. Bernholz is also the publisher of Philanthropy2173, an award winning blog about the business of giving, and she serves as Executive Producer of The Giving Channel on Fora.tv. Dr. Bernholz is a noted analyst of the philanthropic industry and has published articles in the trade and general press, edited collections, and scholarly journals. Her most recent book, Creating Philanthropic Capital Markets: The Deliberate Evolution, was published in 2004. Bernholz has a BA from Yale University and a MA and PhD from Stanford University.

Fran C. Blumberg is Coordinator of the Educational Psychology program at Fordham University. Her research interests concern the development of children's attention and attention strategies in the context of academic and non-academic learning situations. She has published and received funding for her research concerning children's attention and learning while playing video games. Her current project, funded through the Spencer Foundation, concerns the study of children and adolescents learning while playing commercial video games and distinctions between that learning and that which occurs in the classroom. Her most recently edited book is When East Meets West: Media Research and Practice in the US and China (2007; Cambridge Scholars Publishing).

Asi Burak co-founded ImpactGames to influence society and promote change through interactive media.  Toward this end, ImpactGames developed PeaceMaker, a video game simulation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.   Unlike most “serious games,” PeaceMaker aims to bridge the gap between education and entertainment and reach a mass market.  PeaceMaker has been sold in over 60 countries, been featured in top media outlets around the world, and has won several international awards.  Prior to that, Asi was VP of Marketing at Axis Mobile LTD., where he helped to introduce mobile games to a world-wide market (Asia, Europe, U.S.).  As a former Art Director at Saatchi & Saatchi, Asi was first introduced to advanced systems for communication and analysis as a Captain in the Israeli Intelligence Corps.  He holds a Masters of Entertainment Technology from Carnegie Mellon and a BA in Design from the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem.

Heather Chaplin is a journalist and author of the book Smartbomb, about videogames and gaming culture. She is a commentator for All Things Considered and writes for publications such as The New York Times, L.A. Times, GQ and Details. Her column on independent games runs regularly in Filmmaker Magazine. Chaplin has been interviewed or cited about videogames and game culture for Talk of the Nation, The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Atlantic,and Business Week, among others places.

Wendy Cohen is the Manager of Community and Alliances at Participant Media and is the co-founder and National Director of Screening Liberally. Before joining the Participant family, she was the Community Manager at the Huffington Post. Born and raised in Montreal, Wendy moved to New York in 2004 to be the Outreach Coordinator for Arts Engine, Inc. and programmer of their Media That Matters film festival and Media That Matters: Good Food project. She was research and creative assistant for The Art of the Documentary (New Riders Press, 2005), part of the DocuClub screening committee and was a co-chair on the Urban Pathways Young Professional Board . She just finished producing her first short documentary film about bees, which is premiering in New York this summer.

About the Speakers

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Chris Crawford earned a MS degree in Physics from the University of Missouri in 1975. After teaching physics for several years, he joined Atari as a game designer in 1979. There he created a number of games: Energy Czar, an educational simulation about the energy crisis; Scram, a nuclear power plant simulation; Eastern Front (1941), a wargame; Gossip, a social interaction game; and Excalibur, an Arthurian game. Following the collapse of Atari in 1984, Crawford took up the Macintosh. He created Balance of Power, a game about diplomacy, Patton Versus Rommel, a wargame, Trust & Betrayal, a social interaction game, Balance of the Planet, an environmental simulation game, and Patton Strikes Back, a wargame. In 1992, Crawford decided to leave game design and concentrate his energies on interactive storytelling, a field that he believed would become important. He created a major technology for interactive storytelling systems, patenting it in 1997. He is now commercializing his technology at his company website at storytron.com. Crawford has written five published books: The Art of Computer Game Design, now recognized as a classic in the field, in 1982; Balance of Power (the book) in 1986; The Art of Interactive Design in 2002; Chris Crawford on Game Design in 2003; and Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling in 2004. He created the first periodical on game design, the Journal of Computer Game Design, in 1987. He founded and served as Chairman of the Computer Game Developers’ Conference, now known as the Game Developers’ Conference. Crawford has given hundreds of lectures at conferences and universities around the world, and published dozens of magazine articles and academic papers. Crawford served as computer system designer and observer for the 1999 and 2002 NASA Leonid MAC airborne missions; he also has done some analysis of the resulting data. He lives in southern Oregon with his wife, 3 dogs, 10 cats, 5 ducks, and 3 burros.

Dr. Arlene de Strulle is a Program Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR), Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL) where she is engaged in furthering NSF’s current and future investment in cyberlearning. Dr. de Strulle manages the Learning Technologies section of the Informal Science Education Program (ISE) and is the EHR Co-Lead for the Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) and Virtual Organizations as Sociotechnical Systems programs. Dr. de Strulle also serves as a Program Director in Creative IT, Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers, Communicating Research to Public Audiences, and other NSF programs. Along with her work at NSF in cyberlearning, Dr. de Strulle is engaged in research with the Department of Defense investigating the transferability of the military’s game-based education and training programs to science education. Dr. de Strulle has a doctorate in educational technology (instructional game design and virtual reality).

Joellen Easton is a Public Insight Analyst at American Public Media, based in Los Angeles.  She divides her attention among building a network of public sources and interacting with them to inform Marketplace's Sustainability, Entrepreneurship and Washington desks; tackling business technology needs and developing journalism games for APM's Center for Innovation in Journalism; and training CIJ's partner public radio stations in the use of Public Insight Journalism.  Jo came to Los Angeles from Boston, where she had worked in public radio since 1998, most recently as an associate producer at PRI's Global Resources Desk at The World and previously at WGBH Radio's Culture Desk and PRI's Sound & Spirit. She came to American Public Media in 2005 shortly after completing her master's in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, where she wrote her thesis on "High-Interactivity Radio: Using the Internet to Enhance Community Among Radio Listeners."  With a BA in anthropology from Tufts University, Jo has studied classical trumpet at New England Conservatory, West African drumming at the University of Ghana, and audio art in the woods of Quebec.

Ken Eklund is Writerguy, a game designer and writer. He is the creator of World Without Oil, a massively collaborative "historical pre-enactment" of a global oil crisis. World Without Oil broke new ground as the first alternate reality game to confront and attempt to solve a serious real-world problem. Ken's other educational projects include the interactive science mysteries at ScienceMystery.com and the Eagle Eye Mystery series of kids' games; in the commercial realm he has credits in over two dozen games, including major Star Trek and Dungeons & Dragons titles. He lives in San Jose, California.

About the Speakers

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Rafael Fajardo is the founder of SWEAT, a loose collaborative that makes socially conscious video games. SWEAT has published four video games, two that comment on the game-like nature of (il)legal human traffic at the U.S./Mexico border, and two that explore the effects of (il)licit drug agriculture in Colombia. SWEAT’s games have been exhibited internationally. Fajardo also teaches at the University of Denver where he is an associate professor of Electronic Media Arts Design and the Director of Digital Media Studies. With his colleague, Scott Leutenegger, he has overseen the creation of Squeezed, a videogame, co-sponsored by mtvU that comments on the lives of (im)migrant farm workers in the US. With Dr. Leutenegger and with Dr. Debra Austin he has received a multiyear grant from the National Science Foundation to explore the teaching of videogames as a holistic pedagogy in high schools.

Carla Fisher is an educational product developer and doctoral candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she studies technology and its relationship with human cognition and development, particularly as it applies to children and games. She is also a research fellow with Sesame Workshop through the Teachers College Rose Fellowship. Through her work with companies such as Highlights for Children and PBS KIDS Interactive, she has produced and consulted on the creation of dozens of educational games and websites for children. Carla also holds a MA in Media Studies from the New School University.

Mary Flanagan investigates novel approaches to play, and is interested in discovering new ways in which play can affect social change. Flanagan, a MacDowell Fellow and a PI or Co-PI on five National Science Foundation awards, directs the tiltfactor lab, a hotbed of radical design research. Her artwork has been shown internationally, her essays on digital culture have appeared in over 20 periodicals and books, and her own books include reload: rethinking women + cyberculture (MIT 2002), re:SKIN (2007), and critical play (forthcoming 2009). http://www.maryflanagan.com; http://www.tiltfactor.org; http://www.valuesatplay.org

Tracy Fullerton is an experimental game designer and associate professor in the Interactive Media Division of the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California (USC) where she is director of the USC Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab.  Recent credits include faculty advisor for the award-winning student games Cloud, flOw, The Misadventures of P. B. Winterbottom and game designer for The Night Journey a unique game/art project with artist Bill Viola.  She is the author of Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games (2008), a design book formalizing the creative approach used in the USC Game Innovation Lab and games curriculum.

Jim Gasperini, as a game designer is best known for his roles as creator of Hidden Agenda and as Creative Director for SimCity 3000. In the early 1980s, while writing and designing a series of "reader-active" books for Bantam (Time Machine), he wandered into the Colossal Cave (later, Zork). This was a life-changing encounter: clearly, the computer was not just a tool with which to create interactive storytelling, but the medium itself. After writing early text-adventure games (notably Star Trek: the Promethean Prophecy), he conceived Hidden Agenda, inspired by a visit to his journalist brother Bill in Central America during the time of the Contra war. Game design has figured twice in Jim's career. Before, between, and since, his wandering artistic pursuits have included video editor, writer of childrens' books, multimedia artist, software user-experience designer/analyst, photographer, screenwriter, and publisher. His CD-ROM artwork "ScruTiny in the Great Round" won many awards including the Grand Prix du Jury MILIA D'Or at the 1996 Cannes multimedia festival. His passion for stereo photography recently led him to start Cockeyed Creations, through which he publishes 3D image sets for museums, national parks, and zoos. Through Aaron Marcus & Associates he consults, on issues of software conceptual design, for clients ranging from Intel, Ebay, Siemens and Filemaker to small software start-ups and the San Jose Police Department.

About the Speakers

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James Paul Gee is the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University. He is a member of the National Academy of Education. His book Sociolinguistics and Literacies (1990, 3rd edition 2007) was one of the founding documents in the formation of the “New Literacy Studies”, an interdisciplinary field devoted to studying language, learning, and literacy in an integrated way in the full range of their cognitive, social, and cultural contexts.  His book An Introduction to Discourse Analysis (1999, 2nd edition 2005) brings together his work on a methodology for studying communication in its cultural settings, an approach that has been widely influential over the last two decades.  His most recent books both deal with video games, language, and learning.  What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003, 2nd edition 2007) argues that good video games are designed to enhance learning through effective learning principles supported by research in the Learning Sciences.  Situated Language and Learning (2004) places video games within an overall theory of learning and literacy and shows how they can help us in thinking about the reform of schools.  His most recent book is Good Video Games and Good Learning: Collected Essays (2007). Professor Gee has published widely in journals on linguistics, psychology, the social sciences, and education.

Alan Gershenfeld has spent the last 20 years at the intersection of entertainment, technology and social entrepreneurship. He is currently Co-Founder and Managing Partner of E-Line Ventures, a ‘double bottom line’ early-stage venture fund focused on empowering individuals, small businesses and underserved communities to better compete in a global marketplace and popular media which engages people in the critical issues of the day. Prior to E-Line, Alan spent seven years as CEO and Co-Founder of netomat, a leader in mobile-web community solutions. As CEO, Alan helped to transform a network-based art project into a pioneering software company. netomat was selected as a Technology Pioneer at the 2007 World Economic Forum at Davos. Before co-founding netomat, Alan spent six years at Activision, a global leader in entertainment software. He was a member of the executive management team which rebuilt Activision from bankruptcy into a profitable, multi-billion dollar industry leader. At Activision, Alan served as Senior Vice President of Activision Studios where he supervised all product development at the company's Los Angeles studios. Titles released under Alan's leadership include Civilization: Call to Power, Asteroids, Muppet Treasure Island, Spycraft, Pitfall, Zork, and Tony Hawk Skateboarding. Alan currently serves on the Board of Directors of FilmAid International, Games for Change, Sustainable South Bronx, and on the Advisory Boards of Scenarios USA, Personal Technology Solutions, and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center For Educational Media and Research (Sesame Workshop).

Jessica Goldfin is a journalism program associate at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. There she monitors and evaluates the journalism grant portfolio, assists with grant development and has a rocking good time. She joined the foundation as an intern in June 2007, and was hired as a permanent staff member in January 2008. Before that, she interned in the publications department at the Art Institute of Chicago. Jessica earned undergraduate degrees in art history and classical civilizations from Florida State University, and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in communication studies from the University of Miami.

Austin Hill is a Canadian entrepreneur who has been creating technology start-ups for 15 years. He is currently CEO and Co-founder of Akoha a new multiplayer reality-based game based on the concept of pay-it-forward. Incorporating inspirations from virtual worlds, serious gaming and casual gaming, Akoha will be the first mainstream meaningful game allowing players to spread deliberate acts of kindness throughout the world. Austin is also Chairman of Standout Jobs and was formally President and Co-founder of Zero-Knowledge Systems (renamed Radialpoint in 2002) where he helped the company raise $75 million between 1997 and 2001. He also served as Chief Technology Officer and Chief Strategy Officer of Zero-Knowledge Systems, CEO of Synomos Inc. (a Zero-Knowledge Systems subsidiary), and Executive-Vice President of Research for Radialpoint. Radialpoint was honoured by Deloitte & Touche as one of Canada’s fastest-growing technology firms in their 2006 Technology Fast 50 award. Austin was awarded the 2001 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Emerging Entrepreneur in Quebec. In 2002 Austin was named a Technology Pioneer of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

About the Speakers

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Karin Hillhouse has worked for Ashoka's Changemakers initiative in Washington D.C. for the last 10 years, becoming director of partnerships in 2006. Before starting at Ashoka in 1997, Karin was based in Denver, Colorado, and spent several years as a freelance writer, publishing articles, essays, and reflections on literature, art, and architecture, solar energy and historic preservation. She won a writing fellowship from the Rocky Mountain Women's Institute to work on a novel. Additionally, she co-taught "Architectural Theory and Practice" at the University of Colorado at Denver and apprenticed as a landscape architect. As a consultant to Colorado Governor Richard Lamm, she was part of the team instrumental in Colorado's winning a national competition to launch the country's principal research center for the development of solar energy and other renewable energy sources. As a senior policy analyst, she was part of the core start-up staff at the Solar Energy Research Institute (now the National Renewable Energy Laboratory). Working for the Environmental Law Institute, Karin was principal investigator and co-author of a National Science Foundation-funded study of the legal and institutional barriers to solar energy development. She was editor of the Open Space Report, a monthly publication of the Rocky Mountain Center on the Environment. Karin earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Smith College, a master's degree in comparative literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and a master's degree in urban planning and community development from the University of Colorado Denver.

Dr. Justin Hollander is interested in the role of planning and public policy in managing land use and environmental changes associated with shrinking cities. He has worked on Brownfields redevelopment, sustainability indicators, eco-industrial development, military base reuse, and smart decline. Dr. Hollander has written extensively on these topics including peer-reviewed scholarly articles and a chapter in the book Recent Advances in Urban and Regional Studies. His first book, Unwanted, Polluted, and Dangerous: America's Worst Abandoned Properties and What Can Be Done About Them, is forthcoming from the University of Vermont Press in the end of 2008. Dr. Hollander has almost a decade of experience as a practitioner in land use and environmental planning at the local, regional, and federal levels, most recently for the Public Buildings Service of the U.S. General Services Administration as a Presidential Management Fellow. Dr. Hollander teaches classes in regional planning, planning history and theory, computer applications, and field projects. His Spring 2007 Physical Planning & Design course pioneered the use of "Second Life" as a platform for 3-D planning work. Professor Hollander's team was selected as finalists in an international competition exploring depopulation in Second Life. Dr. Hollander has a Ph.D. in Planning and Public Policy from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. While at Rutgers, he conducted research at the National Center for Neighborhood and Brownfields redevelopment. His graduate studies were partially supported through fellowships from the Urban Land Institute and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. He received a BA in Political Science from Tufts University and a MA in Regional Planning from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and a Non-Resident Research Fellow with the Genesee Institute.

Henry Jenkins is the Co-Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of 12 books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide; Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture; The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture; Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture; and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Jenkins writes regularly about media and cultural change at his blog, henryjenkins.org. He is one of the principal investigators for The Education Arcade, a consortium of educators and business leaders working to promote the educational use of computer and video games and of the Knight Center for Future Civic Media, a joint effort with the MIT Media Lab to use new media to enhance how people live in local communities. He is one of the principle investigators for GAMBIT, a lab focused on promoting experimentation through game design, and of Project nml, a MacArthur Foundation-funded project that develops curricular materials focused on promoting the social skills and cultural competencies needed to become a full participant in the new media era. Jenkins has a MA in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa and a PhD in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

About the Speakers

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Devon Johnson is currently pursuing a BA in Interactive Entertainment at USC with specializations in Web Development and Interactive Multimedia. Prior to attending USC, she developed a broad skill set within fine arts, which she continues to apply within her digital work. Aside from creating Hush, Devon has worked on another USC game project called Exchanging Cultures. Devon is continuously challenging herself artistically both in and outside of the classroom through freelance work and personal projects and feels that Interactive Entertainment is her ideal creative outlet.  Barry Joseph, Director of the Online Leadership Program, Global Kids, Inc., holds a BA from Northwestern University and a MA in American Studies from New York University. Barry came to Global Kids in 2000 through the New Voices Fellowship of the Academy for Educational Development, funded by the Ford Foundation. He has developed innovative programs in the areas of youth-led online dialogues, video games as a form of youth media, and the educational potential of both social networks and virtual worlds, combining youth development practices with the creation of high profile digital media projects to yield 21st Century Skills. He has also worked with GK's development program to secure funding from a number of foundations and corporations. Barry served on the steering committee of the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning initiative and his writing appeared in the foundation's 2007 Ecology of Games volume. He has spoken at numerous conferences and published articles in a wide variety of publications. Barry is one of the cofounders of Games for Change and is a member of its National Advisory Group.

Zakiyyah Kareem, Project Manager, Girlstart, has dedicated her professional career to informal education programs that empower young people to be leaders in their communities and the world. She currently serves as PI on Girlstart’s NSF-funded IT Girl project, a program that engages high school girls in digital media projects with a purpose. Zakiyyah comes to Girlstart by way of the public education sector where she spent over 5 years supporting teachers, students, administrators, and community partners in the development of high-quality service-learning programs.

Bob Kerrey is president of The New School in New York City. For 12 years prior to becoming president of The New School, Bob Kerrey represented the State of Nebraska in the United States Senate. Before that he served as Nebraska's governor for four years.

David Kirkpatrick, senior editor, internet and technology at FORTUNE, specializes in the computer and technology industries, as well as in the impact of the Internet on business and society. He writes a column which appears weekly on fortune.com and through e-mail subscription.  Kirkpatrick joined Time Inc. in 1978 while working as a video artist, and started at FORTUNE in 1983. In 1991 he began covering the computer beat. In 1990 his story "Will You Be Able to Retire?" was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in the personal service journalism category. He has written cover stories on Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Intel Sun, and numerous other topics including bogging. Marketing Computers regularly ranks him among the top five most influential technology journalists in the country.   Kirkpatrick has appeared frequently as a technology industry expert on CNN and PBS. Working with other FORTUNE editors, he developed and hosts Brainstorm, a multi-disciplinary conference which brings together global leaders to interact and discuss the future. The conference, first held in 2001, takes place annually in Aspen and is produced in partnership with the Aspen Institute. Kirkpatrick has a BA in English from Amherst College, and attended art school for two years.

About the Speakers

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Gerard LaFond is Co-Founder and Partner of Persuasive Games. Mr. LaFond co-founded Persuasive Games to produce videogames that make you think.  In five short years, Persuasive Games has produced over 30 games for political campaigns, social causes, corporate training and most recently a series of games based on current events featured monthly on the NYTimes.com. Persuasive Games’s forthcoming game Fatworld in partnership with PBS, will be released in early 2008. Persuasive Games has produced award winning work for: Cisco Systems, Domino’s Pizza, Cold Stone Creamery, CNN, The New York Times, Shockwave, Best Buy, and many others. Mr. LaFond’s background includes producing webisodes for Fox TV shows and founding his own advertising agency, red TANGENT. Prior to Persuasive Games, Mr. LaFond was VP of Marketing and Business Development for the award winning interactive agency Media Revolution and was formerly the General Manager of Citysearch.com.  Mr. LaFond is a sought after speaker on the subject of serious videogames, marketing, and interactive entertainment. He has been featured numerous times on NPR, and guest lectured at both UCLA and USC. Mr. LaFond holds an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from the University of California, Riverside and a graduate degree in Management from Azusa Pacific University.

Frank Lantz is Creative Director and co-Founder of area/code, a New York based developer that creates cross-media, location-based, and large-scale social games. He has worked in the field of game development for the past 20 years. Before starting area/code, Frank was the Director of Game Design at gameLab, a developer of online and downloadable games. For over 10 years, Frank has taught game design at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. His writings on games, technology and culture have appeared in a variety of publications.

Ellen LaPointe is responsible for developing key strategic private and public sector partnerships to increase HopeLab's institutional resources, leverage the potential impact of its innovative solutions, and raise awareness of HopeLab's work among thought leaders and key stakeholders. She assumed the role of Vice President of Strategic Partnerships in May 2007 following a two-year tenure as Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at HopeLab. Ellen has extensive experience in organizational leadership, strategy development and implementation, partnership cultivation, fund development, communications, financial management, and program oversight. Prior to joining HopeLab, Ellen served as Executive Director of Project Inform, a national nonprofit AIDS treatment information and advocacy organization. She was Director of Clinical Research at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco from 1992 to 1996, and Coordinator of the Brown University AIDS Program prior to that. Ellen is also an attorney and was an associate attorney at the firm of Heller Ehrman LLP in San Francisco from 1999 to 2001. Ellen received her BA, magna cum laude, in Community Health from Brown University and her JD from the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt School of Law.

Richard Lemarchand is a Game Designer at Naughty Dog, creators of the multimillion selling Jak and Daxter and Crash Bandicoot series of games—which have sold over 35 million copies internationally. He was the Lead Game Designer of Naughty Dog’s first game for the PlayStation 3, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, which received a very warm critical and public reception, going on to sell 1.4 million copies in the first five months after its release. Richard has made story-based character-action games the main focus of his design career, and has worked with some of the industry’s best and brightest in the field along the way. His credits also include the Gex and Soul Reaver series of games, and Jak 3 and Jak X: Combat Racing for Naughty Dog. He is a contributor to Game Developer Magazine, and was a speaker at the Game Developers Conference in 2008. His interests include action games and storytelling, design innovation, education and interactivity, and the socially progressive role that art, film and music play in society.

About the Speakers

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Dr. Michael Levine oversees the Joan Ganz Cooney Center's efforts to catalyze and support research, innovation and investment in educational media technologies for young children. Prior to joining the Center, Dr. Levine served as Vice President of New Media and Executive Director of Education for Asia Society, managing the global nonprofit organization's interactive media and educational initiatives to promote knowledge and understanding of Asia and other world regions, languages and cultures. Previously, Dr. Levine oversaw Carnegie Corporation of New York's groundbreaking work in early childhood development, educational media and primary grades reform, and was a senior advisor to the New York City Schools Chancellor, where he directed dropout prevention, afterschool and early childhood initiatives. Dr. Levine has been a frequent adviser to the U.S. Department of Education and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, writes for public affairs journals, and appears frequently in the media. He was named by Working Mother magazine as one of America's most influential leaders in shaping family and children's policy and serves on numerous nonprofit boards, including We Are Family Foundation, Ready To Learn, Talaris Institute and Teach For America. Levine is also currently a senior associate at the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy at Yale University. He received his PhD in Social Policy from Brandeis University's Florence Heller School and his BS from Cornell University.

Bradford H. Lewis, ACSW is a Program Officer for Learn and Serve America at the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), an independent federal agency where he has served since 1994. He manages a grant portfolio and works on youth voice, community-based issues and technology initiatives. As a member of the Steering Committee for the National Service-Learning Conference, with the assistance of Global Kids, he helped to bring Second Life residents into the conference, in 2006, coverage which expanded in the metaverse in this year's conference to include Whyville. Mr. Lewis was also a guild leader in an MMORPG; has been a panelist or speaker at Games for Change and Games for Health; is active on the Serious Games listserv; and serves on the CNCS Web 2.0 Workgroup. Mr. Lewis received his Master's Degree in Social Work (MSW) from Columbia University in 1983.

Silvia Lovato, as Associate Director, leads the editorial strategy for the PBS KIDS GO! Web site at pbskidsgo.org, PBS's online destination for school-aged children. She has been at PBS Interactive since October 2000. She holds a MA in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University. Prior to working at PBS, she worked as a content producer for Terra Networks and washingtonpost.com.

Colleen Macklin is the Chair of the Department of Communication Design and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City and Director of PETLab (Prototyping Evaluation, Teaching and Learning lab), a joint project of Games for Change and Parsons, supported by funding from the MacArthur Foundation, focused on developing new games, simulations, and play experiences which encourage experimental learning and investigation into social and global issues. She has led social media projects and programs with partners such as the UN and Open Society Institute (OSI), including a design fieldwork program connecting Parsons students with OSI's Public Health programs in Africa and the former Soviet Union. In 2006-2007 Colleen was a fellow at the India China Institute at the New School investigating the use of mobile phones and location-based media in urban design with support from Nokia. In the days prior to the dot.com bubble, Colleen designed websites and interactive applications for clients such Citibank, France Telecom and Moët, and dj'ed and vj'ed at site-specific venues and for cultural institutions such as SoundLab, The Whiney Museum for American Art and Creative Time. Colleen holds a BFA. in Media Arts from Pratt Institute, and has done graduate work in Computer Science at CUNY and International Affairs at The New School.

About the Speakers

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Robert Nashak was appointed Vice President, Worldwide Casual Studios, for the EA Casual Entertainment Label in March 2008. In his role as the head of the Casual Studios Robert will be responsible for the product development strategy and will oversee development of both internal and external development teams.   He will partner with EA Casual Product Marketing to set the Casual Entertainment slate. Robert is an accomplished studio executive with more than 15 years of game and online entertainment development and management experience. Prior to his current position Robert was Vice President and General Manager of Yahoo! Games where he was the key strategist and business owner for Yahoo! Gaming with a focus around multiple content areas including casual game downloads, multiplayer games services, flash games portal, video game editorial and video content.  Prior to this, he was with Glu Mobile for three years as their SVP, Production, and Chief Creative Office.  Before joining Glu, Robert held various product development roles at Acclaim, Vivendi, Disney Online, and Knowledge Adventure, where he worked on both core and casual properties. 

Sandra Day O'Connor (Retired), Associate Justice, was born in El Paso, Texas, March 26, 1930. She married John Jay O'Connor III in 1952 and has three sons—Scott, Brian, and Jay. She received her BA and LLB from Stanford University. She served as Deputy County Attorney of San Mateo County, California from 1952-1953 and as a civilian attorney for Quartermaster Market Center, Frankfurt, Germany from 1954-1957. From 1958-1960, she practiced law in Maryvale, Arizona, and served as Assistant Attorney General of Arizona from 1965-1969. She was appointed to the Arizona State Senate in 1969 and was subsequently reelected to two two-year terms. In 1975 she was elected Judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court and served until 1979, when she was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals. President Reagan nominated her as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and she took her seat September 25, 1981. Justice O'Connor retired from the Supreme Court on January 31, 2006. Currently, Justice O'Connor is working on several projects to foster national dialogue about the judiciary in our system of government.  She has brought together experts at Georgetown Law School and Arizona State University to create Our Courts, which will be an online interactive civics curriculum for middle school students.

Nora Paul is director of the Institute for New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota. Nora was previously (1991-2000) at the Poynter Institute teaching news library management, computer-assisted research, and new media leadership. She was editor for information services at the Miami Herald from 1979-1991.  Nora is the co-author of Behind the Message: Information Strategies for Communicators. She has traveled worldwide presenting seminars and lectures on research methods and innovation in online news. Her work at the Institute focuses on evolving digital storytelling forms, eye-tracking research, and news game development.

Shelley Pasnik is the Director of EDC’s New York-based Center for Children and Technology (EDC/CCT). Since joining EDC/CCT, much of Shelley’s time has been devoted to understanding how cultural institutions, especially public broadcasters, private foundations and corporate philanthropies can support learners. She has sought out opportunities to work with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Intel, the American Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Hall, AOL, WNET/Thirteen, WGBH and IBM. She also has written for a range of organizations and companies, including the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, Apple, the National School Board Foundation, Cable in the Classroom and PBS, for which she created the Parents Guide to Children and Media. She sits on the advisory board for the Global Action Project, a media arts and leadership organization that steadfastly believes young people can transform their communities by expressing their ideas and by honing their critical literacy.

About the Speakers

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Celia Pearce is a game designer, author, researcher, teacher, curator and artist, specializing in multiplayer gaming and virtual worlds, independent, art, and alternative game genres, as well as games and gender. She began designing interactive attractions and exhibitions in 1983, and has held academic appointments since 1998. She received her PhD in 2006 from SMARTLab Centre, then at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. She currently is Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at Georgia Tech, where she also directs the Experimental Game Lab and the Emergent Game Group. Her game designs include the award-winning virtual reality attraction Virtual Adventures (for Iwerks and Evans & Sutherland) and the Purple Moon Friendship Adventure Cards for Girls. She is the author or co-author of numerous papers and book chapters, as well as The Interactive Book (Macmillan 1997). She has also curated new media, virtual reality, and game exhibitions and is currently Festival Chair for IndieCade, an international independent games festival and showcase series. She is a co-founder of the Ludica women’s game collective.

Ken Perlin is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at New York University, He was founding director of the Media Research Laboratory and also directed the NYU Center for Advanced Technology. His research interests include graphics, animation, user interfaces, science education and multimedia. He received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his noise and turbulence procedural texturing techniques, which are widely used in feature films and television, as well as the TrapCode award for achievement in computer graphics research, the NYC Mayor's award for excellence in Science and Technology and the Sokol award for outstanding Science faculty at NYU, and a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation. He has also been a featured artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Dr. Perlin received his PhD in Computer Science from New York University, and a BA in theoretical mathematics from Harvard University. Before working at NYU he was Head of Software Development at R/GREENBERG Associates in New York, NY. Prior to that he was the System Architect for computer generated animation at Mathematical Applications Group, Inc. He has served on the Board of Directors of the New York chapter of ACM/SIGGRAPH, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the New York Software Industry Association.

Cindy Poremba is a digital media theorist, creator and curator researching documentary and video games through Concordia University's Doctoral Humanities program. She has produced and curated non-traditional exhibitions such as the CGSA Artcade, PoV Alternative Games Exhibition, eyeTEASers: Art Podified, and most recently, gamma 256 (Montreal, QC) and The Art of Play Arcade (Pittsburgh, PA), as a member of the Kokoromi collective.

Alex Quinn is the Executive Director for Games for Change. Before joining Games for Change, Alex was Executive Director of the Adult Literacy Media Alliance (ALMA), a project of Education Development Center. ALMA produces the Emmy Award-winning television series, TV411, accompanying website and workbook series, and a range of multimedia literacy and life skills curricula on such topics as health, finance, and family literacy. Alex served as the principal investigator for a multi-year National Science Foundation funded project to develop, promote, and broadly distribute a television-based basic math curriculum for adults. Alex has a background in instructional design, video production, and telecommunications policy, and was the executive director for community media centers in Oregon and New York City. He holds a BA degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts and an MA in Broadcast Communication Arts from San Francisco State University. For more information, email Alex Quinn at alex@gamesforchange.org.

About the Speakers

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Emily Reardon is Supervising Producer in Sesame Workshop's Digital Media department. During her ten years at Sesame Workshop, she has designed and produced educational digital media projects for mobile, web, TV, DVD, console, and CD ROM platforms for mission driven outreach programs, research studies, and commercial projects. Prior to Sesame Workshop, she worked in documentary film and as a baker. She holds a M.A. degree in Education, Communication, and Technology from New York University's Steinhardt School of Education and a BA degree in Art/ Semiotics as well as English and American Literature from Brown University.

Suzanna Samstag Oh is joining the Games for Change Festival from Seoul, Korea where she has lived and worked for nearly 28 years. Originally she came to Korea in 1980 as part of the last group of Peace Corps Volunteers to serve there and she has remained working to promote the country’s traditional culture internationally and as an editor of the Korean-language edition of Newsweek. Recently she was asked to coordinate Daesung Group’s (a major Korean energy company) investments in the culture industry and had the honor of welcoming Suzanne Seggerman to Seoul for our Global Contents Forum in 2007. On that occasion they founded the Games for Change chapter in Seoul and, with the start of the school year in March 2008, inaugurated an undergraduate class at one of Korea’s major universities (Yonsei University) entitled Games for Social Change. Korea is a great country for gamers. Suzanna sees a great opportunity to introduce games for social change as part of the regular school curriculum dealing with topics such as North-South Korean reunification scenarios as well as environmental and energy-related issues. She looks forward to learning more about games for social change at the festival and networking with people and organizations that she can work with.

Chris Satchell, as the general manager of the Game Developer Group at Microsoft Corp., is responsible for driving innovation in products, services and partnerships that will revolutionize the next generation of game development. The Game Developer Group encompasses the Xbox Advanced Technology Group (ATG), worldwide Xbox® Platform Certification and the team delivering the XNA™ development platform. Satchell’s organization is laser-focused on doing everything it can to help developers and publishers effectively deliver their visions on Microsoft® gaming platforms.  Satchell joined Microsoft in 2002 as a development manager in Microsoft Game Studios (MGS), working on critically acclaimed franchises such as Project Gotham Racing® and Rallisport Challenge. Most recently he was director of engineering for MGS, responsible for driving cross-organizational engineering initiatives with a focus on preparing the organization for the next generation of gaming platforms from Xbox and Windows®. Satchell has a long history in games development, having served as an executive director at the 3DO Company, a technical director for Silicon Dream Ltd, and an artificial intelligence specialist and project leader for Eidos Interactive Ltd.  Hailing from the United Kingdom, Satchell has an honors degree in computing and a Diploma in Industrial Studies from Loughborough University. He also received the New Holland Ford Prize for Computing, earning the highest marks in the history of the computer science department, and has completed over two years of postgraduate research into distributed artificial intelligence systems.

Ben Sawyer is Co-director of the Serious Games Initiative and Co-founder of Digitalmill. At Digitallmill, Sawyer is in charge of strategy, technology, and business development. Sawyer has authored or co-authored more than 10 computer trade books as well as numerous articles on a wide range of technology areas including e-commerce, interactive game development, software marketing, and computer graphics. He is also a regular speaker on the topics of e-commerce and other emerging Internet trends. After graduating from New York's Bronx High School of Science and attending the City University of New York-Baruch, Sawyer worked on the campaign staff for Clinton/Gore '92. He also worked on political projects for several major campaigns, a legislative re-apportionment for the Maine State Legislature, and on the news analysis staff for then President-Elect Bill Clinton. In 1995, Sawyer settled in his home state of Maine and began a career as a high-tech freelance writer and technology consultant. That year Sawyer wrote his first book—The Ultimate Game Developer's Sourcebook—which was published in early 1996. In June 1997, Sawyer and Dave Greely founded Digitalmill.

About the Speakers

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Suzanne Seggerman is President and Co-Founder of Games for Change. Before G4C, Suzanne was a Director at NYC-based think tank Web Lab, where she oversaw a variety of cross-media projects. At Web Lab, she co-curated the show "Provocations" for the 2002 Florida Film Festival, the first national exhibition featuring digital games about social-issues. Her background in online media includes community-oriented interactive environments and the design of non-traditional games, which earned her awards from New Voices New Visions and Communications Arts. Before her involvement with new media technologies, she worked as a documentary film producer for PBS, including on Ken Burns/Stephen Ives PBS series The West and as Co-producer of Race For Life, a humanitarian aid and documentary film about Eastern Europe. Suzanne received a BA from Kenyon College and a MS from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Ellen Scott is Social Network Designer at Games for Change, a professor of 4-Dimensional Design at Pratt Institute, and an artist working in digital media. Her experience in online media spans art and commerce, including interactive design, usability testing, and creative production; she gained seven years of experience in strategic consulting and software project management before focusing her career at the intersection of art and technology. Since 1999, she has worked on a variety of cross-media projects for Digital Innovations Group. Ellen is a co-founder of Smartspaces.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to placing art in public-facing spaces, and a co-founder of the Survivor Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising funds and awareness for the NYU/Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture. She currently serves on the board of NYC-ACM SIGGRAPH. Ellen received a BA in Politics from Princeton University and an MFA in Digital Art from Pratt Institute.

Bill Shribman is the Executive Producer of WGBH's Interactive Kids Group and oversees all WGBH kids' projects, including those in development, for Web and new platforms. He devised and produced the internationally recognized Curious George, Zoom, Peep and the Big Wide World, and Between the Lions Web sites. He is also a content producer and games designer for the Fetch, Design Squad, Martha Speaks, Arthur, and Postcards from Buster sites. Traffic to these sites amounts to more than 10 million visitors every month. He devised and produced the site at FFFBI.com, the Fin, Fur and Feather Bureau of Investigation and is also the creator of WGBH's broadband animated series The Greens. His writing for Between the Lions was Emmy-nominated in 2006. He is also currently the principal investigator and lead producer on a U.S. Department of Education Steppingstones of Technology grant, creating games to help kids with ADHD manage issues of organization and task completion.

Karen Sideman is Project Director at Games For Change and works with PETLab, the organization’s prototype creation engine. She maintains a parallel career as a freelance interactive designer specializing in educational play, currently helping create climate change awareness and action materials for the Sally Ride Science Club and edgy flash games for This Is Pop. She has been involved in digital interactive design for about as long as there has been a field to be involved in, and could always be found at the most groundbreaking firms—such as Edwin Schlossberg, Inc. and R|GA Interactive—whenever the really interesting stuff was happening. She spent a good portion of the dot.com boom years as creative director of the team that built Sesame Street Online.

David Thomas is a nationally syndicated videogame journalist, critic and teacher.  He co-authored the Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual and regularly blogs about games at www.examiner.com. He teaches courses covering the history of digital media, videogame studies and a unique class that uses games to teach students about urban planning. His interest in virtual places and leisure spaces led his to study as a PhD student in the college of architecture and planning, where he focuses on the question of “What makes a place fun?” He can be found online at www.buzzcut.com.

About the Speakers

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Christophe Watkins is Executive Producer at Artificial Mind and Movement, North America’s largest independent game developer. He’s responsible for business and corporate development as well as New Media convergence. Prior to AM&M, Mr Watkins was EVP of Business Development at Icarus Stuidos, a leading provider of MMOG and virtual world technologies/services and Co-Founder of Mforma (later renamed Hands-On Mobile) a global leader in the publishing and distribution of mobile entertainment, supporting over 50 wireless operators worldwide. Mr. Watkins was also Director of Multimedia Publishing for France Telecom, Director of New Media for the Infogrames Group—now Atari, one of the world’s largest publishers and distributors of entertainment software and a television producer in France and New York.

Peggy Weil, Visiting Assistant Professor of Interactive Media at USC School of Cinematic Arts, is a digital media artist and designer focusing on interactive design as immersive experience for perceptual and civic engagement. She has produced interactive work for The Voyager Company, Broderbund, Electronic Arts, Von Holtzbrinck and Ravensberger Interactive, and was awarded the MILIA D'OR in Cannes in 1998. Recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts & WebLab grant to create The Blurring Test (www.mrmind.com) a bot who challenges you to convince him that you are human. Weil has consulted for The Getty Institute and The Dia Foundation; for the later Weil designed the original Roden Crater Website for artist James Turrell. She is currently designing and producing a comprehensive digital presence for Turrell and Skystone Foundation to launch coinciding with the crater opening in 2012. She worked as designer and producer on innovative games at USC’s Game Innovation Lab: ELECT for the Institute for Creative Technology and The Redistricting Game for Annenberg Center. With Nonny de la Peña, she was awarded a residency in BAVC’s inaugural New Media Producer’s Institute for Gone Gitmo, an installation of Guantánamo Prison in Second Life. She is the recipient of a San Francisco Foundation 2008 commission to address how emerging technology impacts arts and arts organization's connection to new audiences.

Jordan Weisman has been the creative motivating force behind the founding and successful growth of Smith & Tinker, 42 Entertainment, and a number of other companies during his near quarter-century in the media and entertainment industry. He is responsible for the creation of The Beast, which Internet Life called "the Citizen Kane of online entertainment," and is widely regarded as the first alternate reality game (ARG). With 42, he oversaw the advancement of the ARG as an art form and the creation of I Love Bees and Year Zero. Jordan co-founded FASA Corp. in 1980, and led the design and creation of game lines such as BattleTech, Shadowrun, and Crimson Skies. In 1987, Jordan and his partners founded VWE, and built the world's first virtual reality entertainment venue, The BattleTech Center. In 1992, members of the Disney family acquired a majority stake in VWE. In 1995 Jordan founded FASA Interactive to develop MechWarrior, a PC game that ultimately sold more than 11 million units. Microsoft acquired FASA Interactive in 1999 and Jordan assumed the role of Creative Director of Microsoft's Entertainment Division. Jordan left Microsoft in the fall of 2002 to found 42 Entertainment in 2003. In 2000, Jordan and Dawne Weisman founded WizKids, creating collectable miniatures games including Mage Knight, HeroClix for Marvel and DC, and MechWarrior: Dark Age. Retail sales for WizKids products topped $100 million in 2003. In 2003, Jordan sold WizKids to The Topps Company. Jordan has won more than 100 awards during his career, including election to the game designer's hall of fame by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design, and selection as Pacific Northwest Entrepreneur of the Year for 2003 by Ernst & Young.

Connie M. Yowell is the Director of Education in the MacArthur Foundation's Program on Human and Community Development. In this role, she focuses on grants relating to public education, and on the implications for education of young people's use of digital media.  Prior to joining the Foundation, Yowell was an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where her work included the study of reasons why Latino youth drop out of high school. Previously she worked as a Policy Analyst in the Office of Policy and Planning of the U.S. Department of Education. Before that Yowell was a Research Assistant at the University of California at San Francisco and at Stanford University.  Yowell earned her bachelor's degree from Yale and her PhD from Stanford University.

About the Speakers

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Elizabeth Aaker: Research Coordinator, UMass Medical SchoolAdam Aberman: Director of Global Digital Strategy, Ashoka's Youth VentureBenjamin AllenCarole Artigiani: Founder and Executive Director, Global Kids Inc.Jay Bachhuber: Online Leadership Program Associate, Global Kids, Inc.Kenneth Bailey: Sector Organizing and Strategy Lead, Design Studio for Social InterventionTraci Bauer: Managing Editor/multimedia and innovation, Democrat and ChronicleLillian Baulding: FreelanceCraig Beilinson: Director of Marketing, Microsoft CorporationLucy Bernholz: President, Blueprint Research & Design, IncRadha Blank: Program Assistant, Arts & Culture, The Nathan Cummings FoundationDonelle Blubaugh: Director, Education, PBSFran Blumberg: Associate Professor, Fordham UniversityHeidi Boisvert: Multi-Media Manager, BreakthroughNatasha Boskic Kim Brizzolara: President, Brizzolara ProductionsClaudine Brown: Program Director, Arts & Culture, The Nathan Cummings FoundationEric Brown: CEO, ImpactGames LLCRobert Brown: Dean, UNCG/Division of Continual LearningTravis Bullard: Corporate Public Relations Manager, AMDAsi Burak: Co-Founder, Chief Product Officer, ImpactGamesMatthew Burke: Assistant Professor, George Washingtong UniversityAlice Cahn: VP Corporate Responsibility, Cartoon NetworkIdit Caperton: President & Founder, World Wide Workshop FoundationMichael Cervino: Vice President, Beaconfire ConsultingNancy Chapelle: Managing Director, Content & Programming, TVOMery ChertoffPerri Chinalai: Media Assistant, Breakthrough

Dixie Ching: Research Associate, Joan Ganz Cooney Center, Sesame WorkshopSharon ChingMarjee Chmiel: Director of Digital Media, The JASON Project- National GeographicRyan Clemens: Technology Support Analyst Principal, Arizona State UniversityKerry Cochrane: Director of Library Services, Adler School of Professional PsychologyDan Cogan-Drew: Senior Online Development Specialist, Education ConnectionWendy Cohen: Manager, Community and Alliances, Participant MediaColleen Cohen: Acting Director of Media Studies, Vassar CollegeRonald Cole: Senior Program Officer, USIPEsther Cookson: Director, Strategic Initiatives, Web Wise KidsLinda Cooper: Associate Professor, Queens College CUNYChris Crawford: Founder, StorytronAmanda Crispel: Interim Program Director, Game Development, Champlain CollegeTaryn Cunha: Content Producer, Fisher-PriceRick Cunningham: President, Corridor R&DSteven Dagustino: Director, Fordham UniversityDrew DavidsonLyell DaviesLeigh Davis: Community Organizer—Media Maker, Peoples Organization for ProgressAnn DeMarle: Director, Emergent Media Center, Champlain CollegeKraig DeMatteis: Technical and Curriculum Developer, Fordham UniversityCarol Diamond: Managing Director, Health Program, Markle FoundationKarin Dicks: Global Community Program Specialist, AMDSam DiGangi: Associate Vice President, Arizona State University, Applied Learning Technologies InstituteAdair Dingle: Professor, Seattle UniversityDiana Donahoe: Professor, Georgetown UniversityShawn Donohue: Assistant Coordinator of Technology Training, New York Public LibrarySusan Dreher: Researcher / Programmer, Columbia University—Virtual Learning Worlds

Registered Attendees (As of May 23, 2008)

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Mallika Dutt: Executive Director, BreakthroughLou Elin Dwyer: Gallery Educator, National Portrait GalleryJoellen Easton: Public Insight Analyst, American Public MediaLaura Efurd: Chief Community Investment Officer, ZeroDividePatricia Ellingson: Creative Head, TVOTom Ellman: Director of Media Studies, Vassar CollegeRafael Fajardo: Associate Professor, University of DenverKen Feaster: IT Systems Specialist, National Institute on Money in State PoliticsMark Feldman: Principal & Managing Director, Cause ConsultingCarla Fisher: Doctoral Candidate, Teachers College, Columbia UniversityNick Fortugno: Co-Founder/President, Rebel MonkeyTracy Fullerton: Assistant Professor, USC Interactive MediaMedard Gabel: BigPictureSmallWorldDiane Gal Gal: Assistant Professor, SUNYGary Goldberger: Vice President/Partner, FableVisionJessica Goldfin: Journalism Program Associate, John S. and James L. Knight FoundationJoel Gonzales: Vice President, Geek House GamesJuliet Gorman: News Editor, NYTimes.com, The New York TimesRhoda Grauer: Dean, School of Visual and Performing Arts, C. W. Post Campus, Long Island UniversityJeff Gray: Wiki/Webmaster, World Wide Workshop FoundationJohn Grills: Tech Director, Partners International FoundationJessica Hammer: Teachers College, Columbia UniversityTheresa Helou: Producer, Fisher PriceChristine Henseler: Associate Professor, Union CollegeLeni Herschman: Chief Creative Officer/Director, Team GaiaAustin HillKarin Hillhouse: Director, Changemakers Partnerships, Ashoka

Gary Hirsch: Consultant, Creator of Learning EnvironmentsJessica Hochman: Assistant Professor, Pratt InstituteAndrew Hoffman: Project Director CPB /Initiatives Manager, WGBH - InteractiveJustin Hollander: Assistant Professor, Tufts UniversityDebbie Holmes: Chief Librarian, Georgia Highlands CollegeErin Holzer: Senior Global Event Manager, MicrosoftMargaret Honey: Senior VP Strategic Initiatives & Research, Wireless GenerationJulia Itani: Student, Teachers College, Columbia UniversityNaomi JacksonRon JacobsonBrian Jordan: Student, Wesleyan UniversityBarry Joseph: Director of Online Leadership Programs, Global Kids, Inc.Zakiyyah Kareem: Project Manager, GirlstartJennifer Kenyan: Special Projects Coordinator, Vermont Campus CompactLila King: Senior Producer, CNN.com & iReport.comStaci King: Marketing Manager, MicrosoftLeslie Kirkwood: Director, Team GaiaDavid Klevan: Education Manager for Teacher and Distance Learning, U.S. Holocaust Memorial MuseumLewis Kofsky: Producer / Partner, Curious PicturesGene Koo: CALI Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & SocietyGerard LaFond: Co-Founder, Partner, Persuasive GamesRobert Lane: Computer Systems Analyst, Columbia UniversityEllen LaPointe: Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, HopeLab FoundationElaine Laughlin: Senior Program Manager, WGBHHillary Leone Josh LernerScott Leutenegger: Professor of Computer Science, University of DenverJennifer Levine: Strategy Guide, American Library Association

Registered Attendees

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Shireen Lewis: Project Coordinator, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer CenterBrad Lewis: Program Officer, Corporation for National and Community ServiceStephen Lewis: Digital Arts and Sciences, Trinity SchoolDale Lipschultz: Literacy Officer, American Library AssociationLori Lobenstine: Youth Action Lead, Design Studio for Social InterventionBlyth Lord: Project Director, WGBH, Children's ProgrammingSilvia Lovato: Associate Director, PBS KIDS Interactive, PBSDavid Lowenstein: National Urban Fellow, Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame WorkshopKaryn Lu: Site Development Manager, CNN.comDaniel Lubetzky: Founder & President, PeaceWorks FoundationColleeen Macklin: Associate Professor, Parsons The New School for DesignRob Mancabelli: Director of Information Systems, Hunterdon Central DistrictJonathan MandellMaria Marewski: Executive Producer, Children's Media ProjectSarah Margles: Education Officer, American Jewish World ServiceIvan Marovic: Video Game Producer, York Zimmerman Inc.Erin Martineau: Associate for Teaching, Learning, and Research, CUNY--Undergraduate EducationCraig Mathewson: Video Producer, Xbox.comMisty MatonisRaymond McCarthy Bergeron: Project Director, Emergent Media Center, Champlain CollegeAnnemarie McCoy: Creative Consultant, The BigFish BIZKate McEwan: PR Executive, Edelman Public RelationsTaina McField: Ecological Innovation and Contemplative Practice, The Nathan Cummings FoundationRoisin McGlynn: Global 3rd Party Games Marketing, XboxAlan Meyers: Co-founder & CEO, Past4Ward, LLC

Karen Michaelson: Executive Director, TincanDorey Miller: Interaction Designer, ESI DesignKenny Miller: EVP & Creative Director, MTV Networks, Global Digital MediaMadhuri Mohindar: Video Producer, BreakthroughAnne Moroney: Student, Computer Science, Queens CollegeTam Myaing: Game Designer, Founding Partner, Neuronic GamesLora Myers: Curriculum Director, Adult Literacy Media Alliance (ALMA)Gregory Naranjo: Exhibition Developer, U.S. Holocaust Memorial MuseumLiz Nealon: Managing Director, StarWalkKidsJennifer Newton: Program Advisor, Van Heyst GroupJoanne Nicholson: Professor of Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical SchoolAngel Nieves: Assistant Professor, University of MarylandNemo Nox: Director, Interactive Experience, The Case FoundationCelia O’DonnellJulie O Sullivan: Professor, Georgetown University Law CenterSuzanna Oh: Senior Advisor, Daesung GroupChinwe Onyekere Onyekre: Program Officer, Robert Wood Johnson FoundationItay Ophir: Product Manager, World Wide Workshop FoundationRik Panganiban: Second Life Producer, Global Kids, Inc.Angela Paradise: Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, Stonehill CollegeNancy Parks: Assistant Professor, Herron School of Art & Design/IUPUIShelley Pasnik: Director, EDC/Center for Children and TechnologyNora Paul: Director, University of Minnesota - Institute for New Media StudiesRobert Peagler: Senior Associate, Matter/W. K. Kellogg FoundationCelia Pearce: Director, Experimental Game Lab, Georgia TechPaolo Pedercini: Senior Optimization Developer, Molleindustria

Registered Attendees

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Allyson Peerman: Vice President, Public Affairs, AMDChrista Phillips: Xbox LIVE Community Manager, MicrosoftJeremy Pope Marc Prensky: Author, speaker, CEO, Games2trainDiana Projansky: Senior Manager/Senior Producer, Fisher PriceAmu Ptah: Manager, US Partnerships, World Wide Workshop FoundationDebbie Rabina: Assistant Professor, Pratt Institute - SILSLaurie Racine: President, dotSUBDan Rauzi: Senior Director, Technology Programs, Boys & Girls Clubs of AmericaEmily Reardon: Supervising Producer, Sesame Workshop Brian Richards: Director, Instructional Design & Media Services, Middlesex County CollegeSally Rosenberg: Game Builders AcademyBob Runyan: President, Educational SimulationsPJ Rusnak: University of British ColumbiaBarbara RussellPamela Rutledge: Director, Media Psychology Research CenterRafi Santo: Virtual Community Manager, Global Kids, Inc.Alex Sarlin: Instructional Designer, Columbia UniversityKaren Schrier: Senior Producer/Doctoral Student, Scholastic/Columbia UniversityMorgan Schwartz: Assistant Professor of Digital Media, Marymount Manhattan CollegePeggy Sheehy: Media Specialist, Suffern Middle SchoolKaren Sheekey: Director, Team GaiaRisa Sherman: Senior Consultant, Cause ConsultingAnne Shongwe: Director, AFROESBill Shribman: Executive Producer, WGBHMike Silverman: Manager, Public Relations, AMDSeymour Simon: Creative Director, StarWalkKidsHarold Simon: Senior Fellow, National Housing InstituteAriana SouzisCrissy Spivey: Web Producer, Breakthrough

Dawn Spring: Associate, CERHAS, DAAPPamela Stern: Learning Strategist, self employed Phillip Stewart: Student, Teachers CollegeBenjamin Stokes: Program Officer, MacArthur FoundationDavid Stookey: President, Game-LearningTaylor Strait: President, Gaming Insight Research Group, Inc.Shannon Sullivan: Program Director/Executive Producer, World Wide Workshop FoundationChris Swain: Professor / Co-Director EA Game Innovation Lab, USC School of Cinematic ArtsLawrence Swiader: Chief Information Officer, U.S. Holocaust Memorial MuseumRadhika Tandon: Online Leadership Program Associate, Global Kids, Inc.John Tattersall: Project Director, The TEN ProjectJohn Taylor: Game Builders AcademyAbigail TaylorChristopher Testa: Director, Outreach Technology, United States Hololocaust Memorial MuseumAnn Thai: Assistant Manager, Joan Ganz Cooney Center, Sesame WorkshopDavid Thomas: Instructor, University of Colorado DenverDeborah Thomas: CEO, SillyMonkey LLCWade Tinney: CEO, Large Animal GamesWard Tisdale: Director, Global Community Affairs, AMDRobert Torres: PhD candidate, NYUTom Toynton: Game Development Progam Coordinator, Bloomfield CollegeTim Trayhan: Web Developer, Democrat and ChronicleDiane TuckerBarbara Vagliano: Student, New York Botanical Garden illustration programJoost van Dreunen: Doctoral candidate, Columbia UniversityLance Vikaros: Graduate Student, Teachers CollegeMary WahrmbyDrew Ann Wake: Editor, LiveWiresNina Walia: Associate Director, PBS KIDS InteractiveJim Walker: Marketing, Educational Simulations

Registered Attendees

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Vanessa Wanger: Screenwriter, Brizzolara ProductionsStephanie Wasilik: Senior Account Supervisor, Edelman Public RelationsCarl Weichert: Training & Curriculum Strategist, Bay Area Video CoalitionPeggy Weil: Visiting Assistant Profesor, Interactive Media, USC School of Cinematic ArtsJordan Weisman: CEO and Founder, Smith & Tinker, Inc.Lucas Welch: President, SoliyaDan WhiteVanessa Whorley: Senior Account Supervisor, Edelman (for Microsoft)Wick Wickenden: President, Jersey Cow SoftwareWollman Wollman: Executive Director, Development, Scholastic MediaLauren Young: Program Director, The Spencer FoundationMichael Young Christine Zanchi: Producer, WGBH InteractiveMelinda Zipin: President, Assertive Diplomacy Trainings

Registered Attendees

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The fantastic G4C staff and consultants, including (and especially!)

Charles Fernandez and Tobin Productions, Video, for getting it all on tapeElena Halizcer, Community Manager, for being our online maven and maestraAnna Hammond, PR Manager, for her communications bravadoEleanor Lang, Outreach Manager, for excellent outreach and connections Maren Perry, Event Manager, for her amazing job putting (and holding!) this festival togetherAlex Quinn, our Executive Director, for being our Eric Schmidt so ably!Phoebe Reed, Network Architect, for website management and oversightEllen Scott, for her excellent MC'ing, and lots of other help along the waySuzanne Seggerman, President, for making her vision a realityKaren Sideman, Project Director, PETLab, for all her wisdom and guidanceMark Smith, Our Very Own Mac Genius and Sponsorship Coordinator, for his able managing of all things sponsor-ish (and Suzanne-ish!)

Festival Advisors/FriendsAlan Gershenfeld, E-Line Ventures and Chairman of the Board, G4C, for his continuing guidance and assistance with the festival and organization Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games and Georgia Tech, for his ongoing advice on the festival and the organization Jim Gee, Arizona State University for his help in early festival planning and speaker involvementKatie Salen, Gamelab, Institute of Play, for her help with the 101 Workshop

InstitutionsThe New School and Parsons for all the amazing things they do for (and with!) us, especially the excellent work of Colleen Macklin, Deborah Kirschner, Christine Mickletz, Jedd Wilcox, Kristin Sorenson, Bridget Fisher, Edwin Diaz, and Bob Kerrey

Contributors to the G4C Festival Scholarship FundJoel Gonzales, Peggy Sheehy, Sally Rosenberg, David Thomas, Tracy Fullerton

Our VolunteersSheila Page, Oscar DeLeon, Naveena Swamy, Sandhya Moraes, Mike Edwards, Leanne Wagner, Alejandro Luján, Angela Martenez, Adam Flores, Sarah Fay Krom, Collette Ellis, Ariana Souzis, Laura Staniland, Ralph Warren, Brendan Giordano

Our Sponsors Microsoft, AMD Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

All the amazing Speakers and Expo participants

Thank you all for making this event happen and for your continuing contributions to this

community!

Games for Change would like to thank:

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About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services, and

solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

About XNA Game Studio

XNA Game Studio is the game development platform offering

tools, technology and solutions to help student, enthusiast, and

independent game developers create games for Xbox 360 and

Windows. Starting later this year, you will be able to create your

own games using XNA Game Studio and a Creators Club

Membership and publish them on Xbox LIVE for everyone to play. Our goal is to continue to

ensure the best games are being built for Microsoft platforms and we do that by creating the best

and most accessible software and services so every level of developer can turn their dreams into

reality.

About Xbox 360

Xbox 360 is a superior video game and entertainment system

delivering the best games, unique entertainment features and a unified

online gaming network that revolves around gamers. Xbox 360 has a

portfolio of nearly 400 games in 37 countries. More information can be

found online at http://www.xbox.com/xbox360.

About Games for Windows

Microsoft Windows is the most popular

operating system in the world for games,

delivering the widest range of titles, the most

gaming hardware choices, and advanced

gaming technology for players of all types. With Windows as the cornerstone, the Games for

Windows platform offers publishers and gamers the most enjoyable and innovative gaming

experiences available on a PC. More information can be found online at http://

www.gamesforwindows.com.

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The AMD Foundation is proud to sponsor the 5th Annual Games for Change Festival and support the movement to create and use digital games with social content as powerful tools to help improve our world. Our new education initiative, AMD Changing the Game, is AMD’s commitment to support the evolution of digital gaming toward becoming a more dynamic entertainment and educational experience for youth. Its mission: to inspire youth to learn critical education and life skills by equipping them to create digital games with social content. The program focuses on 13-18 year olds with a particular emphasis on enriching the educational experience of disadvantaged young people. AMD Changing the Game will meet youth where they are, combining their thirst for learning with their passion for gaming, while helping them become socially responsible citizens in a technology driven society.

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YOU INVENT IT. WE FUND IT. $25 MILLION.

The Knight News Challenge, a contest by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, has ear-marked $25 million over five years for digital innovation in community news.

As much as $5 million will be given away this year to support smart, innovative solutions to inform and inspire communities. Projects can range from community databases to tools that help add people to the local digital conversation. The contest is open to anybody anywhere in the world.

Who: David Cohn.

Project: Spot Journalism will provide a new way to pay for local investigative re-porting by soliciting financial support from the public. Independent journalists and residents will propose stories, and Spot Journalism will use the web to seek “micro-payments” to cover the costs. If enough donors contribute the amount needed, a journalist will be hired to do the reporting.

On the web: http://www.spot.us

Who: Angela Antony and Sandra Ekong

Project: Beanstockd is a developing idea to encourage green living through an inter-active game. Using social networking tools and real-time news and information, play-ers would be able to track their environmental impact, discover how they stack up against neighbors and team up in a friendly competition to leave the smallest imprint on their community. The game revolves around a virtual stock market, where each player receives an amount of personal stock based on their environmental footprint. Players can increase their stock value by reducing their footprint, or invest in other teams who are predicted to do the same. The project is tailored for a small commu-nity, such as a university campus, and aims to unite its members around reducing the area’s demand on natural resources.

On the web: http://www.beanstockd.com

WINNER: DAVID COHN, $340,000 (2008)

BLOG WINNER: THE BEANSTOCKD PROJECT $40,000 (2008)

Two 2008 News Challenge winners. Read ‘em all on the web site.

Want to enter the 2009 Knight News Challenge? Applications open again on September 1, 2008.

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PETLab is a joint project of Games for Change and Parsons The New School for Design. The group develops prototype games, simulations, and play experiences which encourage investigation into social and global issues. PETLab participants collaborate with interested organizations to explore possibilities for games as a form of public interest engagement. In this first year, we are working with a wide range of partners such as MTV, Youthnoise, Microsoft, Boys and Girls Clubs, and New York Public Library. Our projects span a number of platforms including Flash, Xbox XNA, open source tools and methods, public space appropriation, and mobile media.

PETLab

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Notes

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Notes