Futures of Entertainment Conference November 16, 2006

As advertisers look for new ways to engage audiences, content creators search for new audiences, and audiences quest for new ways to connect with culture, the nature of what counts as 'entertainment' is rapidly changing. We are seeing the blurring of aesthetic and technological distinctions between media platforms, of 'advertising' and 'content' and of 'creator' and 'consumer'. Futures of Entertainment brings together key industry leaders who are shaping these new directions in our culture. The conference will consider developments such as user-generated content, transmedia storytelling, the rise of mobile media and the emergence of social networking.

Futures of Entertainment is free and open to the public. Registering ensures a place at the conference if attendance exceeds capacity, so please only register if you will be attending. If the number of registrants exceeds capacity, registration will be closed.

Arrangements for speakers are still being finalized. This may change before the conference.

Speakers Include:

danah boyd is a doctoral student in the School of Information at University of California-Berkeley. Funded by the MacArthur Foundation, her dissertation focuses on how youth engage in digital publics like MySpace. In particular, she investigates how youth negotiate a presentation of self in such mediated contexts where the audience is often unknown. She blogs about social media at Apophenia.

Jason Mittell is an assistant professor of American civilization and film and media culture at Middlebury College. His book, Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture explores television genres as cultural categories, as exemplified by a number of historical case studies

Michael Lebowitz is the co-founder and CEO of Big Spaceship, a New York-based creative agency whose work has received numerous awards, including the Cannes Lion, Key Art, One Show and Clio Awards. He has lectured, led seminars internationally on design and interactive marketing, and been a juror for many industry awards.

Official Website: http://convergenceculture.org/futuresofentertainment/index.html