The future of the future

My friend Sam Ford, longtime ATWT fan and soap academic extraordinaire, asked me to share this with my blog readers.

Although this conference focuses on media and entertainment from an industry perspective, there may be opportunities for non-industry types to attend. 

AND, the conference features the awesomeness that is Tom Casiello. What more could you want?

Details below. I wish I could go, but I can’t make it. However, I’m hoping to talk to Sam or any other attendees after the conference. And I will be talking about “The Long Tail” in a future post.

Futures of Entertainment 3 Conference

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Futures of Entertainment 3 conference will take place Friday, Nov. 21, and Saturday, Nov. 22, at the Wong Auditorium in the Tang Center on MIT’s campus. 

Futures of Entertainment 3, an event sponsored by the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium (http://www.convergenceculture.org/), is the third annual conference bringing together media industries professionals and media studies academics to discuss the current state and ongoing trends in media. 

This year’s conference will include:

• Panels on how value is counted in the media industries, understanding audiences, and social media;
• Panels on the comic book industry, franchising and transmedia;
• Discussions about media distribution in a global marketplace, and the intersection of academia and the media industries. 

Speakers at the conference include Kim Moses, executive producer of The Ghost Whisperer; Alex McDowell, production designer for Watchmen; Gregg Hale, producer of The Blair Witch Project and Seventh Moon; Lance Weiler, director of The Last Broadcast and Head Trauma; and Tom Casiello, Daytime Emmy award-winning former writer for soap operas including As the World Turns, One Life to Live, Days of Our Lives, and The Young and the Restless; Peter Kim, a founder of the Dachis Corporation; as well as representatives from HBO Online, World Wrestling Entertainment, and other innovative media companies and projects. 

The conference will also feature academics such as Henry Jenkins (MIT, founder of the Convergence Culture Consortium and author of Convergence Culture and Textual Poachers), Yochai Benkler (Harvard Law School, author of The Wealth of Networks), John Caldwell (UCLA, author of Production Culture), Anita Elberse (Harvard Business School, author of “Should You Invest in the Long Tail?”), and Grant McCracken (author of Transformations).

More information on the conference, including the program and registration, is available at http://www.convergenceculture.org/futuresofentertainment/