From crossmedia communication:

An excellent site, Games and Storytelling, has uploaded lectures from leading academics on…you guessed it…games and storytelling. The program investigates the two, highly contested areas, inviting top researchers to address:

How do game-play and storytelling exactly relate to each other in different game genres and cultures? What are the interactive stances of play and storytelling? How can they be most powerfully applied to game design? Games and Storytelling lecture presentations by top professionals introduce some important industry case histories, while providing the contextual, historical and cultural background necessary for deeper understanding and resulting innovation in game design. GameMaster workshops apply knowledge from case histories and lectures in practice and introduce principles of surprise and suspense in game design and storytelling. The program runs in yearly cycles for three years: September-May 2004-5, 2005-2006, 2006-7.

The lectures, uploaded after the event, so far feature: Jessica Mulligan, Mika Tuomola, Frans Mäyrä, Christa Sommerer, Aki Järvinen, Henry Jenkins and Katie Salen. Wow! The lectures are long and some have accompanying powerpoints and pdfs. This is an excellent resource organised by the Media Lab at the Unversity of Art and Design Helsinki and the Hypermedia Lab, Tampere University with corporate sponsorship from Nokia and the Finnish national lottery company. I have no problem with the thankyous to the financiers every lecture — well worth it.

So far I’ve only listened to Henry Jenkins’ talk, War on Effect and Meaning, on violence and games after his appearance in court over the Colombine shooting where the judge decreed that ‘videogames do not express ideas’. Jenkins provides some level-headed insights around references to America’s Army and the educational games company he’s involved in: Education Arcade. I can’t wait for the next one.

The 3rd ceremony (I didn’t know there was 1) for the International iTV Awards is happening in Cannes on April 13, 2005. ‘The Awards competition has grown to incorporate all new formats of global television interactivity, through remote control, fixed and mobile phone.’ I hope they have snippets of the works on the site after the ceremony. But definately check out their links page for some excellent interactive television resources.

While on April 5 the 2nd annual [itvt] Awards for Leadership in Interactive Television will take place in San Francisco. The site has an excellent gallery of details and pics and the chance to nominate leaders. The site is also home to whitepapers, a helpful glossary and a pretty good list of books.

Even sooner is the IPTV Forum held in London on March 8th and 9th. IPTV is pitched as:

Telecom companies are increasingly exploring ways to earn revenue and IPTV can be seen as a new way of doing this. Internet Protocol is more and more used to deliver not only voice (telephone), and data (internet) but video as well, this forms the ‘Triple Play’ which has the increasing benefits of customer retention, loyalty, and ultimately reduced churn.

On the exhibiton page are links to some interesting content creators.