Henry Jenkins To Keynote Serious Games Summit DC 2006

The CMP Game Group (which also runs Serious Games Source and sister site Gamasutra) has announced that influential game, film and media scholar Henry Jenkins will deliver the keynote address at this year's Serious Games Summit D.C. (SGS D.C.). Jenkins, the DeFlorz Professor of Humanities and Director of Comparative Media Studies at MIT, has spent much of his career studying media and the way people incorporate it into their lives. SGS D.C., which will take place from Monday, October 30 through Tuesday, October 31, 2006 at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, VA, will include multiple sessions focusing on a wide variety of topics. The Summit's purpose is to provide a platform for game developers, buyers and industry professionals to exchange ideas and advance the state of the art of serious games development in areas such as corporate training, education, first responders, government, health, military, science, and social change. Titled "Serious Games in the Age of Media Convergence and Collective Intelligence," Jenkins's session will describe a world where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, and where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways. Jenkins will also discuss the shifts in the media environment, explaining how they are paving the way for the serious games movement. Henry Jenkins is the principal investigator for the MacArthur Foundation-funded New Media Literacies Project, which is helping to identify and foster core social skills and cultural competencies young people need to be full participants in the 21st century. He is co-founder and director of The Education Arcade, which is exploring the pedagogical potentials of computer and video games. "We are honored to have Henry Jenkins, a leading expert in media studies, keynote this year's event," said Jamil Moledina, executive director, Game Developers Conference. "Developers and game commissioners will explore the central theme of how to solve problems through games when tackling projects such as learning beyond didactic teaching and effective model building." For more information regarding Serious Games Summit DC 2006, interested parties can visit the event's official website.