iDMAa – Shambling Rambling Babbling

iDMAa 2008: Keynote Day 3 – Pat Aufderheide

Nov 082008

Day 3 began with Pat Aufderheide of the Center for Social Media at American University delivering a keynote entitled, “Why the Digital Future is More Copyright Friendly than You Think.” The two words that she believes makes this difference are, “Fair Use.” It was an excellent talk, hoping to connect the worlds of digital media producers (the iDMAa crowd) with those of documentary film makers who have already united under the Center for Social Media in developing a set of best practices around Fair Use and Copyright.

Pat also mentioned that she is working with the ICA and communication scholars more generally in developing a set of Fair Use best practices for comm. scholarship. On November 11th, the SfSM will be releasing a set of best practices for Media Literacy Education.

iDMAa 2008: Gaming and Virtual Worlds – Day 2

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Nov 072008

What was perhaps most interesting about this panel was actually what was not said. The panel in many respects represented the (dis)connect between departments and disciplines surrounding (video)game development. One presenter seemed to even embody the kind of (inter)disciplinary divide. One panelist actually said they didn’t understand why they were even on this particular panel, though I thought it was abundantly clear why they were. The (dis)connect between code/engineering, design, and art, which are so prevalent in the videogame industry was perfectly represented between the presenters.

iDMAa 2008: Keynote – Social Experience Design

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Nov 072008

Day 2 started off with Ruben Steige of Millions of US talking about Social Experience Design. I think one of the key takeaway elements of this talk is that, “entertainment has always been social.” In part because of a second shift in how people interact with media Ruben spent the majority of his talk examining the role that game theory and game design has come to mean for all media. The interactive shift that the web represented five to ten years ago is now giving way for a second shift that is even more fundamental. That shift has to do with the shift toward social media.

iDMAa 2008: Reflections on Day 1

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Nov 072008

iDMAa certainly started things off on the right foot. Though I gained membership in the organization when I joined the University of Georgia and the New Media Institute, I didn’t know much about the organization until Scott Shamp sent me his Podcast talking about last years events. It of course helped that the event was in historic downtown Savannah, GA this year at SCAD.

iDMAa 2008: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Interoptability

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Nov 291999

A funny thing happened during Paul Ledak’s (of IBM) keynote at iDMAa today. He was ultimately talking about the promise of game spaces to become new distribution platforms. Of course he understood that this requires a very different model of production than the videogame industry currently opperates under. To deal with this, he mentioned an “emerging interoptability” movement that IBM is participating in. What I found so particularly interesting about this is that during the question and answer session I mentioned how console manufacturers are so invested in closed systems.

His response was to talk about how cable television companies were working together to create open systems. After the presentation I approached him, asking if I could get a copy of those slides. His response was that he couldn’t because they were closed. …

So, it’s a closed open standard? What in the world? Perhaps it will be opened later? The whole concept of open standards and platforms is that many eye are a good thing. Ultimately it is this same mentality that prevents the maturation of the videogame industry. So this emerging interoptability is going to kill itself before it is even developed by the vested interest in secrecy.

Now, I know that there are many companies which find openness troubling, but it is crucial to long term viability and stability.