To organise a conference, simply make a list of speakers and titles.
Next, use highlighters to identify themes and then cut into strips with a pair of safety scissors.
Finally, arrange all the bits on a grid and just keep swapping them around until you have a schedule that works.
Et voila!
http://bit.ly/RHDgoc
If you were going to open a cafe, you'd probably want to give it a name. Preferably something meaningful and memorable. Directly meaningful names like "The Cafe", "The Coffee Bar" or "The Snack Bar" are non-starters in a town that sets up a new sixth form college and doesn't call it "[Town name] Sixth Form Centre" or "[Well known historical figure with an association with the town] College" but something entirely random (One, brainchild of Suffolk County Council, I'm referring to you). UCS Union's new café - Theta - will officially open for business on Thursday 2 September 2010.Oh gosh. That sounds well impressive. It's foreign, it's got something to do with education (albeit not in a discipline one can actually study at the institution) and err ... well that's it. Or rather it is until one digs a little deeper.
[...]
Theta shares the space with the new Waterfront Gallery, managed by the School of Arts and Humanities, which will open on Tuesday 7 September.
Theta is the eight [sic] letter of the Greek alphabet and is widely used in the sciences, in particular as a mathematical symbol, making it an appropriate choice for a café in an educational institution.
In classical Athens, [theta] was used as an abbreviation for the Greek θάνατος (thanatos, “death”) and as it vaguely resembles a human skull, theta was used as a warning symbol of death, in the same way that skull and crossbones are used in modern times. It survives on potsherds used by Athenians when voting for the death penalty. Petrus de Dacia in a document from 1291 relates the idea that theta was used to brand criminals as empty ciphers, and the branding rod was affixed to the crossbar spanning the circle.Seems like the naming committee have pulled a killer name out of the hat then. It should pull in the punters in droves ... unlike its clumsily named predecessor, Couture.
The final year undergraduates in the School of Arts and Humanities at UCS got their End of Year Show on last night, and very impressive it was too.
Pictures to follow.
A map of the site is available on the expo site at machiniplex.net/expo, along with a schedule of screening times. Click the image above for a larger version. Click the image below to open the schedule as a PDF.
Click on the image to open a link to the Facebook group associated with the event. More information about the Machinima Expo is available here: http://machiniplex.net/expo
Alternatively, you can click on the following SLurl to go to the Second Life location if you have Second Life installed: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ucsville/141/124/25
Second Life can be downloaded (for free) from http://secondlife.com/support/downloads.php
As well as the talks, there were some student games on show, both complete games from some of the L2 and L3 design and programming students, and paper prototypes of games being developed by the L1 Computer Games Design group. The Curiosity Collective were showing some of their curios (I liked the proverb generator) and Matthew Applegate had an installation running too.
There was a great turnout, interesting speakers and a nice set of prototypes of student games on show at the today's Suffolk eLearning event.
Scott Hewitt of RealProjects kicked off the talks with an overview of the development of elearning, from screen -> screen -> test type-scenarios to current developments that make use of 3D game engines, not to mention a variety of portable devices, including familiar pocket-fillers such as the Nintendo DS, Sony PSP and the Apple iPhone, as well as some examples of how Wii-controller technlogy is being harnessed for training and educational use.
Scott Hewitt has posted his presentation on the RealPrtojects website. View it here: Games-Based Learning. Other resources are also available on the RealProjects site: http://www.realprojects.co.uk/gamebasedlearning/
Dan Mayers and Adam Mayes's presentation on Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG) was really interesting and thought provoking. I'm not that familiar with the concept of ARG-ing beyond it involving some running around and "doing stuff" IRL, but the presentation suggested how ARG-ing can bring a whole new lease of life to things like field trips and guided walks. There are some great integrational (is that a word?) possibilities, directing users/players to online content--web pages, information, clues, video etc.--using QR codes and mobile phones. Truly fascinating stuff.
Adam wasn't physically present--he was in Denmark, so it was great that he took part via Skype with nary a hitch (I've been to several tech-focussed conferences where the inevitable technical hitch leads to non-ironic whoops from the audience after someone gets on stage and manages to get the speaker's Mac to connect to the internet via wifi. Adam's link-up today was so seamless that no-one noticed or, if they did, they were all too cool to whoop or make a fuss).
There was some concern about Matthew Applegate as his last known contact with the world was a tweet last night to say that he was feeling poorly, but he nonchalantly arrived, bang on time, with a laptop and a carrier bag and talked about the decline of programming in the school curriculum and went on to make some suggestions about some ways people could get coding (eg: scratch, squeak, atmosphir, processing) and he also mentioned some projects that will bring basic--beginner's all-purpose symbolic instruction code--to some popular consoles.
Some of the level three students on the Computer Games Design and Computer Games Programming courses will be showing some of their key Stage 1 games at the forthcoming Games-Based Learning event to be held at the UCS Waterfront building, 2.00-5.00 on 11th November 2009 in collaboration with Real Projects. Student games on show include Bloodstone, Sum Leaping and Music Man. Additional information about the event can be found on the Suffolk eLearning Forum website.
Some of the level one Computer Games Design students are preparing paper prototypes for the event. I've had a sneak preview of some of the artwork and it's incredibly good. The other thing that's stunning is that the level one students have only been on the course for six weeks and they are getting stuck-in to the development of their games for Key Stage 1 (that's for children aged between five and seven for anyone unfamiliar with the terminology of primary education in the UK). When the level one students' games have been finished, they will be exhibited at a different event.
Other exhibitors/speakers include the delightfully madcap mob known as The Curiosity Collective; the prolific chip-tuner Matthew Applegate (aka Pixelh8); our own Dan Mayers, games designer Adam Mayes, and Scott Hewitt from Real Projects.
Here are some sneak preview images from one of the prototypes:
Nicole Small created a great promo piece for the Machinima Expo that's taking place at UCSville in Second Life on 22nd November 2009. Another of Nicole’s machinima pieces will be showing at the festival, as part of the UCS student showreel. The showreel includes the following works:
Ben Deakin, When Mr Deff Comes Calling
Alexandra Burnell, The Tell-Tale Heart
Mark McLaughlin and David Hunter, S.P.A.Z.
Aaron Giles, American Beauty
Alan Salmon, Soldiers of War: Tribute
Aaron Bridgeforth, Dante Vein Interview
Nicole Small, Carmilla
It’s great that these pieces will be seen by an international audience along with some of the most exciting and cutting-edge machinima around. A full list of the films in the running for prizes can be seen here:
http://machiniplex.net/expo/films-screening-at-the-expo/
As well as the film festival itself, and the associated awards to be given by a panel of judges, there’ll be other things going on too, such as discussion panels, Q&A sessions with machinima directors, presentations and various exhibits and stands (it’ll be a bit like the Latitude festival, except it won’t be in a field).
Of particular note is a presentation called “Which Machinima Engine For You?”, which will be of interest to those who want to get started in machinima and who might be wondering which game to use (did I mention machinima is the art of making films using games technology?)
Another highpoint will be an installation featuring the work of machinimator Lainy Voom. Her wesbite is here: http://www.voom-machine.com/
Meanwhile, if you have two minutes to spare, spend them watching her recent film, Push, which was screened at the Cambridge Film Festival.
Nicole Small, currently in the final year of her BA (Hons) degree in Film and Media Studies at UCS, created a marvelous short promo for the forthcoming Machinima Expo 2009. There's Sims 2, Second Life, and what looks like a bit of Quake III Arena/Machinimation 1 and World of Warcraft all in a glorious green-screened melange of machinima. I particularly like the way a poster advertising the event is just in the background in one of the shots.
Where Worlds Collide:
The Games Eden exhibition went off virtually hitch-free (unfortunately, the black display boards were made of material that was almost impossible to fix the exhibits on to, but everything stayed up for the event itself). There was a very good turn-out. About 70 visitors came to the event, both UCS students and visitors from local schools (several school parties came, which was great).
The UCS games design students who exhibited their work and who were involved in the set-up (Craig, Dean, Amber, Andrew) will have gained some valuable experience that will be useful not only for the School of Arts' End of Year Show, but also for other times they might need to present their work. (The "Get Into Games" feature in the current issue of Edge magazine talks about the games course at the University of Gotland in Sweden, where building a portfolio and exhibiting work are key components of the course: "The exhibition teaches our students to present their work at events and to communicate the value of their games in a competetive climate.")
The speakers at the Games Eden event at UCS were:
Here's John McMillan's presentation on setting up a business:
John McMillan, who collaborated with Games Eden to help initiate the event, kindly supplied me with these Blackberry-snapped images of the evening:
