CISP’10-BMEI’10 is a premier international forum for scientists and researchers to present the state of the art of multimedia, signal processing, biomedical engineering and informatics. The previous CISP’09-BMEI’09 attracted over 3000 submissions from around the world. The registration fee of US$390 includes proceedings, lunches, dinners, banquet, coffee breaks, and all technical sessions. CISP’10-BMEI’10 is technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

Selected best papers will appear in SCI-indexed journal(s). All papers in conference proceedings will be indexed by both EI Compendex and ISTP, as well as the IEEE Xplore (CISP 2010 IEEE Catalog Number: CFP1094D-PRT, ISBN: 978-1-4244-6514-9; BMEI 2010 IEEE Catalog Number: CFP1093D-PRT, ISBN: 978-1-4244-6496-8).

For more information, visit the conference web page:

   http://cisp-bmei2010.ytu.edu.cn

If you have any questions after visiting the conference web page, please email the secretariat at cisp_bmei@ytu.edu.cn

Join us at this major event in beautiful Yantai !!!

Organizing Committee

                      cisp_bmei@ytu.edu.cn

You will find the brightest minds, the most innovative research, the leading companies, and the most stimulating discussions in the fields of virtual environments, augmented reality, 3D user interfaces, and haptics, all gathered March 20-26, 2010 in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA (just west of Boston). We invite you to join us for a fascinating week of presentations, exhibits, workshops, and special events.

The greater Boston area is home to over 50 video-game companies. At this year’s conference, we will promote the cross-fertilization of gaming and VR through several efforts.

IEEE Virtual Reality 2010 Keynote Speaker announced:
Keynote Title:  Breaking Down the Walls: The Future of Second Life
Speaker Info:  Howard Look, Senior Vice President of Customer Applications, Linden Lab
http://conferences.computer.org/vr/2010/program/keynote.html

NVIDIA to Sponsor Best Paper and Best Student Paper Awards! Prizes for each include a Quadro FX 5800 card or Tegra development kit.

The Advance Program has now been posted:
http://conferences.computer.org/vr/2010/program/week.html

Also, we are pleased to co-locate with the IEEE Symposium on 3D User Interfaces (March 20-21) and the Haptics Symposium (March 25-26).

For complete conference information, please visit:

http://conferences.computer.org/vr/2010/
http://conferences.computer.org/3dui/3dui2010/
http://www.hapticssymposium.org/next_conference.htm

To register for the conference, you may click on the link below:
http://conferences.computer.org/vr/2010/misc/registration.html

If you are interested in exhibiting or sponsorship of the conference, please view the Supporter Prospectus:
http://conferences.computer.org/vr/2010/misc/IEEE_VR_2010_ExhibitsSupporterProspectus.pdf

VR 2010 is sponsored by the Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee of the IEEE Computer Society.

=============================

ICEC 2010: 9th International Conference on Entertainment Computing

“ Creative and Innovative Entertainment Theory, Science, Art and Contents in 21C”

Supported by IFIP=ACM+ACS+BCS+CIE+GI+IEEE+IPSJ+KIISE+SEE+many other organizations

September 8-11, 2010  *  Venue: COEX Seoul Korea  *  Website: www.icec2010.or.kr

———————————————————————————-

Important Dates:

March 15, 2010  Deadline for Full and Short Paper Submissions

April 15, 2010  Notification of Acceptance for Full and Short Paper Submissions

April 30, 2010  Deadline for Poster and Demo Submissions

May   15, 2010  Notification of Acceptance for Poster and Demo Submissions

June  10, 2010  Camera Ready Copy

———————————————————————————-

Papers should be submitted through the EasyChair system:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icec2010  

(either in PostScript format or in PDF format)

Please use the LNCS format for formatting your paper:

http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-7-72376-0

All paper submissions must include the author’s name(s), affiliation, complete

mailing address, phone number, fax number and email address. 

A special issue with the “top ten” long papers will be published in the

international journal of Entertainment Computing (Elsevier):

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/717010/description#description

All other accepted submissions will be published in the Proceedings (LNCS, Springer):

See e.g. http://www.springer.com/computer/hci/book/978-3-642-04051-1

———————————————————————————-

ICEC2010 will cover not only technical but also artistic, empirical and theoretical issues

regarding entertainment practices; we invite submissions of

- Full Papers:    not exceeding 12 pages

- Short Papers:   not exceeding  6 pages

- Posters, Demos: not exceeding  3 pages

———————————————————————————-

Topics include (but are not limited to):

   Artificial Intelligence for Games//

   CG & Visual Effects//

   Computer, Video, Console and Internet Games//

   Creative Entertainment Theory and Design//

   Digital Broadcasting and Digital Cinema//

   Digital Entertainment and Sports//

   Edutainment//

   Entertainment Robots//

   Entertainment Technology, Applications, Interfaces and Architecture//

   Human Factors of Entertainment Technology//

   Human-Robot Interaction & Performance//

   Impact of Entertainment Technology on Users and Society//

   Integration of Interaction and Multimedia in Entertainment Systems//

   Interactive Graphic Design; Interactive Sound Design//

   Interactive Television and Broadcasting//

   Methodologies, Paradigms, Tools for Entertainment Applications//

   Narratives / Digital Storytelling//

   New Genres of Entertainment Technology//

   Simulation/Gaming Methodologies//

   Smart Gadgets and Toys//

   Social Impact, Social Networking, Sound and Music//

   TransMedia, Art and Entertainment//

   Ubiquitous/Pervasive Entertainment//

   VR/AR/MR Entertainment Contents//

———————————————————————————-

Feel free to broadcast this information and to encourage people

to submit papers to ICEC 2010.

Best Regards.

Organizing Committee

Matthias Rauterberg (TUE), Fumio Kishino (OU), Young Jik Lee (ETRI)

General Chairs

Hyun Seung YANG (KAIST), Ryohei Nakatsu (NUS), Don Marinelli (CMU)

Call for Papers

Overview
Future Play 2010 will be held alongside Game Developers Conference® (GDC) Canada during Vancouver Digital Week 2010. Vancouver Digital Week includes a series of events for top creative minds and business leaders working in Digital Media. We are pleased to present Future Play at the Vancouver Convention Center, in Vancouver British Columbia, Canada, May 6-7 2010.

Since 2002, Algoma University has been hosting Future Play, an international conference to advance game design and technology. Future Play features cutting-edge peer¬-reviewed academic research and discussion on creative and experimental game design and development. Future Play brings together researchers, developers, and government partners for formal and informal engagement and examination of emergent features of computer game development for entertainment, for learning/teaching, for serious purposes and to impact society. Future Play also provides an important forum for future game development talent to gain perspective on the knowledge, skills and attitude required to succeed in the game development world. Beginning with Future Play 2007 Algoma University has teamed up with the Ontario University Institute of Technology to give Future Play attendees the chance to interact with some of the most talented people in the games world today.

GDC® Canada is a forum for Canadian developers to share best practices for fostering ingenuity and quality games within their region and distributed globally. This event emphasizes studying the challenges and opportunities of creating games with long production cycles, large development teams, and multi-platform releases.

Scope of the Conference
Future Play addresses issues in Game Design, Art, and Technology by enabling thought ¬provoking presentations from leaders in academia and industry, peer ¬reviewed research presentations, workshops (including design, technology, and career workshops), and exhibitions of posters, games, and the latest game technologies and systems available from industry ¬leading vendors.

Topics of interest to Future Play include, but are not restricted to, the following:

Design and Human Factors:
Social and ethical issues for games
Interdisciplinary issues
Gender issues
Narrative Design

Innovations in Technology:
Software engineering for games
Artificial intelligence for games
Innovative rendering algorithms
Game engine design
Networking and multiplayer support

Innovations in Art and Production:
Animation and motion capture
Modeling & Rigging Methodologies
Sound and music Design/Production

Education and Serious Games:
Games for Education
Games for Health
Game-based Learning
Game-based Curriculum
Bridging the academia-¬industry gap

Paper submissions must present original, unpublished research. Papers under review elsewhere must not be submitted to Future Play. The following categories of papers will be accepted:

Full papers (8 pages):
Should present original reports of substantive new work - eight page maximum. Accepted full papers will be presented in the form of a 20 minute presentation at the conference. Individual presentations will be grouped by topic into sessions by conference organizers.

Short papers (4 pages):
Should present interesting recent results or novel thought-provoking ideas that are not quite ready for a regular full-length paper. Four page maximum.  Accepted short papers will be presented in the form of either a poster or 20 minute presentation at the conference.

Extended Abstracts (2 pages):
Late-¬breaking advances and work ¬in ¬progress reports from ongoing research are encouraged to be submitted as extended abstracts - two pages maximum.  These will be presented in the form of a poster presentation throughout the conference.
Papers must adhere to ACM formatting — Portable Document Format (PDF) formatted in two-column conference style. LaTeX and Microsoft Word templates will be made available from the Future Play website (http://futureplay.org ). Further details regarding ACM formatting are available via the following ACM URL: http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates

All submissions will be peer reviewed and evaluated based on originality, technical and/or research content/depth, correctness, relevance to the conference, contributions, and readability. All accepted papers (full, short, and poster) will be included in the distributed conference proceedings and the online ACM digital library.

Since 2007 proceedings of the Future Play conference have been included in the Association for Computing Machines (ACM) digital library. The Program Committee is currently working with ACM to ensure “in-cooperation” status for Future Play 2010 and we are confident this will be granted this year again. Pending ACM approval, accepted submissions will be included in the ACM Digital Library.

Please submit your paper via the EasyChair conference system available via the following URL:
https://www.easychair.org/login.cgi?conf=futureplaygdccanada2010

Conference Chairs
Bill Kapralos, University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Andrew Hogue, University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Simon Xu, Algoma University
Jay Rajnovich, Algoma University (Chair Emeritus)

Important Dates (TENTATIVE)

Submission deadline: March 5, 2010
Notification: April 9, 2010
Final paper submission: April 23, 2010

For Further Information
For further Information, updates, and to register please consult the official Future Play 2010 website athttp://www.futureplay. General inquiries about Future Play 2010 can be directed to futureplay@algomau.ca.

*************************************************************************************************************
EASST Conference 2010, European Association for the Study of Science
and Technology
‘Practicing Science and Technology, Performing the Social,’
University of Trento, Italy, 2-4 September 2010. Abstract submission
deadline: 15 March 2010.
http://events.unitn.it/en/easst010
**************************************************************************************************************

TRACK:

DIGITAL GAME PLAY AS SOCIOTECHNICAL PRACTICE

The Digital Game industry has become one of the fastest growing,
innovative and globalised industries in advanced Western economies and
Digital Games have become a key cultural artefact and leisure practice
in contemporary societies. Developing out of the American military
industrial and academic complex in the 1970s the study of Digital
Games design and play is the study of a range of sociotechnical
practices and the negotiations between a range of human and non-human
actors operating within systems of rules. The complexity of these
relationships brings forth a series of questions that can be
investigated using Science and Technology Studies approaches. However,
to date games studies, with few exceptions, have failed to adopt STS
approaches and the STS community has largely ignored this area of
study.

This track seeks to develop the relationship between the game studies
community and the STS community. Several research questions can be
used to guide this: What STS theories can be used to understand
Digital Games as sociotechnical phenomenon? Is the concept of practice
and the practice-based approach useful to investigate Digital Games?
Is there a relationship between power as inscribed and imposed by
artefacts and the technical dimensions of Digital Games? What rules
are inscribed into Digital Games technologies and what social worlds
do these rules describe? What contribution can the study of Digital
Games make to the STS discipline at large? And what contribution can
an STS approach make to game studies? Can we foresee an after-method
approach for Digital Games?

We invite papers that tackle the sociotechnical dimensions of Digital
Games and address some of the questions outlined above. Contributions
might include (but are not restricted to):

•       Digital Games as material semiotic artefacts
•       Digital Games as sociotechnical assemblages
•       The mess of digital games
•       Innovation in game design as actor-networking and social shaping
•       Digital Game design and/or play as performance and practice
•       Disruptive sociotechnical users’ practices (e.g. hacking, modding)
•       The scripting of gendered gaming practices
•       Governance and regulation of gaming practices

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be sent by email (following
website instructions:
http://events.unitn.it/en/easst010/abstract-submission) by 2010 March
15th. Please include also a preliminary references list (up to 4).

Contact for inquiries: stefano.depaoli [at] nuim.ie

Convenors

Aphra Kerr is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the
National University of Ireland Maynooth.  Her research focuses on the
regulation, production and consumption of digital media and in
particular of digital games; she established and runs the industry and
community website. (www.gamedevelopers.ie)

Helen W. Kennedy is Deputy Head in the Department of Culture, Media
and Drama at the University of the West of England (UWE) in the UK.
She has been researching and writing about games since 1993 and
co-founded and chaired (from 2004 – 2009) the Play Research Group at
UWE.

Jennifer Jenson is Associate Professor of Pedagogy and Technology in
the Faculty of Education at York University. Her research interests
include gender and gameplay and the design and development of digital
games for education.

Stefano De Paoli is postdoctoral researcher at the Department of
Sociology at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. Stefano has
worked in STS since 2004 and recently his research interest has
embraced Massive Multiplayer Online Games
(http://www.nuim.ie/nirsa/people/postdocs/stefano_de_paoli.shtml)
****************************************************
** To send and receive IFIP-EC-NEWS, go to
** http://listserver.tue.nl/mailman/listinfo/icec
** and subscribe directly
****************************************************
** News archives:
** http://listserver.tue.nl/mailman/private/icec/
****************************************************
** To join the IFIP ENTERTAINMENT COMPUTING Group
** contact: g.w.m.rauterberg@tue.nl
****************************************************

SUBMISSION DUE DATE:     1st May 2010

International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP)

Official publication of the Information Resources Management Association
www.igi-global.com/IJPOP

Co-Editors-in-Chief:  Steve Goschnick & Sandrine Balbo
Published: Semi-annual (both in Print and Electronic form)

Mission of IJPOP:

The International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP) is
cross-discipline in range yet singularly focused on empowering
individuals to conceptualise, design, program, configure and
orchestrate Internet-powered mashups, game mods (modifications),
aggregate and structure personal media and build standalone
cloud-based and client-side applications (on smartphones, netbooks,
laptops, desktops, home network and novel appliances)  into
self-fashioned tools and products that ultimately suit the user’s own
unique needs and aspirations. Other individuals may well take up such
apps, mods and mashups for themselves, further customising, enhancing
and embellishing them, or they may in part be used in a social or
family context (to the benefit of the collective aspirations of those
Social Worlds of which the individual is a part)  nonetheless, the
focus of composition, development and customisation is on a product
for oneself,  upon theory, concepts, techniques, methodologies and
ultimately tools that service a market of one. Our mission is to be
the first journal that comes to mind to academics and practitioners
alike and remain the best with regard to all aspects of
People-Oriented Programming. Our papers and reviews will be insightful
and compelling to both educators and researchers, and often to a wider
audience too  the people for whom this paradigm of software
development has come about.

International Editorial Review Board:

* Prof. David Benyon,
School of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University, UK
* Prof. Birgit Bomsdorf,
Applied Computer Science, Fulda University, Germany
* Dr. Lawrence Cavedon, Senior Researcher, National ICT Australia (NICTA)
* Ass. Prof. Erik Champion, Auckland School of Design, Massey University, NZ
* Prof. Karin Coninx, EDM, Hasselt University, Belgium
* Prof. Larry Constantine, University of Madeira, Portugal
* Ass. Prof. Virginia Dignum,
Policy & Management, Delft University of
Technology, NL
* Dr. Anke Dittmar, University of Rostock, Germany
* Prof. Alan Dix, InfoLab21, Lancaster University, UK
* Dr. Rod Farmer, Experience Strategy, Vodafone Hutchison Australia
* Prof. Geraldine Fitzpatrick, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
* Prof. Peter Forbrig, Rostock University, Germany
* Dr. Martin Gibbs, DIS, University of Melbourne, Australia
* Prof. Patrick Girard,
LISI, Ensma, France
* Dr. Judith Good,
Director, IDEAs Lab, The University of Sussex, UK
* Prof. Michael N. Huhns, University of South Carolina, USA
* Prof. Christophe Kolski, LAMIH, University of Valenciennes, France
* Prof. Ryszard Kowalczyk, CS3, Swinburne University, Australia
* Prof. Jiming Liu, Hong Kong Baptist University
* Prof. Kris Luyten, Expertise Centre for Digital Media, Hasselt
University, Belgium
* Prof. Philippe Palanque,
IRIT, University Paul Sabatier, France
* Dr. Fabio Paterno,
CNR, Italy
* Ass. Prof. Philippe Pasquier,
SIAT, Simon Fraser University, Canada
* Dr. John Rooksby, Computer Science, University of St Andrews, UK
* Dr. Mark Rouncefield,
Computing Department, Lancaster University, UK
* Dr. Dominique Scapin, INRIA, France
* Prof. Graeme Shanks, DIS, University of Melbourne, Australia
* Prof. Ian Sommerville, University of St Andrews, UK
* Prof. Ulrike Spierling, University of Applied Sciences, Erfurt, Germany
* Prof. Constantine Stephanidis, ICS, Greece
* Prof. Leon Sterling, Faculty of ICT, Swinburne University, Australia
* Prof. Christian Stary, Kepler University, Linz, Austria
* Peter J. Wild, Independent Researcher, Cambridge, UK
* Prof. Gerrit van der Veer,
School of Computer Science, Open University, NL

Associate Editors

* Dr. Connor Graham, Independent Researcher, Singapore
* Ass. Professor Yusuf Pisan, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
* Ass. Professor Aaron Quigley, HITLab, University of Tasmania, Australia
* Dr. Christine Sun, www.taiwan.com.au, Australia
* Dr. Daniel Sinnig, Concordia University, Canada

SCOPE:

People-Oriented Programming requires high-level tools to empower both
the technical and non-technical user, which in turn calls upon
research into meta-models that inform design and construction, that
aid comparisons of these tools, and facilitates the interchange of
content between them. The meta-models of most interest to POP
initially, are drawn from two disparate disciplines  the Task
Analysis (TA) and Agent-Oriented (AO) paradigms both of which often
have models with representations of entities matching the needs of
POP, e.g. goal, task, object, agent, individual, role, intention and
communication.  Several AO architectures and methodologies have called
upon branches of Psychology to formulate AO meta-models that
incorporate mentalistic notions such as perception, motivation and
intention, but which are most often aimed at constructing artificial
humans and the like. In POP we too call upon those same Psychologies
and similarly enhance and formulate meta-models and methodologies
influenced by them, but with the intention of augmenting and
empowering the individual human, in areas where they themselves desire
aid or have identified a gap in their own abilities or resources,
which they want to enhance.

From Sociology, POP draws upon ethnography with a focus on
self-ethnography using tools such as cultural probes, life blogs and
life logs to capture aspects of the individual’s own life, themselves
(or through a life coach), from which they draw the desire and/or
frame the need for new technological artefacts to be used in their own
lives. Interactivity, with respect to facilitating and streamlining a
regular user’s intention to build their own artefacts, and
situatedness in terms of the individual’s current location and
activities, are two other facets of HCI (human computer interaction)
that POP encompasses.

Video gaming is the first application area where large numbers of
everyday users have been able to envisage and then developed their own
innovations within existing games. So-called game mods are working
examples of POP where players have appropriated userfriendly tools,
usually built into the game engines by the vendors (e.g. The Sims,
World of Warcraft, etc.). Video games have joined other media (e.g.
movie, novel, comic) in the new genre of transmedia storytelling (e.g.
franchises such as Tomb Raider, The Matrix, Harry Potter), allowing
the player to enter the story ’so far’, extending it in the ‘now’,
constructing their own individualised narratives and increasingly,
with the capability to enhance and extend the realm of the game
itself. These individual constructed game mods allow players to extend
virtual realms and narratives in real-time, in directions often
unforeseen by the game engine makers.  Such activities are
increasingly a part of an individual’s entertainment and education.
Game modding as described, and the engines and tools that enable it,
are within the scope of POP.

Internet-based mashup tools (e.g. Google Wave) have opened up a second
application front beyond game mods, where POP is likely to gain mass
adoption and occasionally produce radical user innovation. The
selection and orchestration of disparate distributed services (e.g.
web services; information feeds; the Cloud) by an individual within a
user-friendly toolkit or framework, is also in the scope of POP. While
the formal protocols and the technical enactment of such specific
services are of little interest here, the quality, access, usage,
aggregation and orchestration of them by the individual themselves,
into a personalised synergy of capability made available through some
enacting technology, are of acute interest to POP. Modeling techniques
and people-friendly notations that bridge and coordinate distributed
services together with local resources within POP tools  ones that
the layperson can understand and use in conceptualising their designs
- encompasses another cross-discipline facet of POP.

RECOMMENDED TOPICS:

Topics to be discussed in this journal include (but are not limited
to) the following:

* Activity theory and modeling
* Agent meta-models, mental models
* Alert filter and notification software, automated task assistance
* Augmented reality, augmented interaction
* Automating personal ontologies, personalised content generation
* Client-side conceptual modeling
* Computational models from psychology
* Context-aware systems, location-aware computing, ubiquitous computing
* Cultural probes, self-ethnography
* End-user composition, end-user multi-agent systems
* Game development support tools
* Game mods, game engines, open game engines
* Home network applications
* Human-centred software development
* Interface generators, XML-based UI notation generators
* Interface metaphors
* Life logs, life blogs, feed aggregators
* Mashups, mashup tools, cloud mashups
* Model-driven design, didactic models, model-based design and implementation
* New generation visual programming
* Personal interaction styles, touch and gestures
* People-Oriented Programming (POP)
* People-Oriented Programming case studies
* Personal ontologies and taxonomies
* Personalisation, individualisation, market of one
* Personas and actors
* Real-time narrative generation engines
* Role-based modeling
* Service science for individuals
* Situated computation, social proximity applications
* Smart-phone mashups, home network mashups, home media mashups
* Software analysis & design, software process modeling
* Software component selection
* Speech and natural language interfaces
* Storyboarding, scenarios, picture scenarios
* Task flow diagrams, Task-based design
* Task models, task analysis, cognitive task models, concurrent task modeling
* Use case models, user interface XML notations
* User-centered design, usage-centered design
* User interface tools, XML-based UI notations
* User modelling, end user programming, end user development
* Wearable computing, bodyware
* Web-service orchestration, web-service co-ordination

SUBMITTING TO IJPOP:
Prospective authors should note that only original and previously
unpublished articles will be considered. INTERESTED AUTHORS MUST
CONSULT THE JOURNALS GUIDELINES FOR MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS at
http://www.igi-global.com/development/author_info/guidelines
submission.pdf PRIOR TO SUBMISSION. All article submissions will be
forwarded to at least 3 members of the Editorial Review Board of the
journal for double-blind, peer review. Final decision regarding
acceptance/revision/rejection will be based on the reviews received
from the reviewers. All submissions must be forwarded electronically
to stevenbg@unimelb.edu.au.

PUBLISHER:
The International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP) is
published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the
Information Science Reference (formerly Idea Group Reference),
Medical Information Science Reference, Business Science Reference,
and Engineering Science Reference imprints. For additional
information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com.

All inquiries and submissions should be should be directed to the attention of:

Steve Goschnick
Co-Editor-in-Chief
International Journal of People-Oriented Programming
E-mail: stevenbg@unimelb.edu.au
www.igi-global.com/IJPOP
_______________________________________________

Call for Submissions

After the great success of Meaningful Play 2008, we are happy to send out of the call for submissions for the upcoming International Academic Conference on Meaningful Play 2010, taking place October 7-9, 2010 in East Lansing, Michigan, USA.

Whether designed to entertain or to achieve more “serious” purposes, games have the potential to impact players‘ beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, emotions, cognitive abilities, physical and mental health, and behavior.

Meaningful Play 2010 is a conference about theory, research, and game design innovations, principles and practices.   Meaningful Play brings scholars and industry professionals together to understand and improve upon games to entertain, inform, educate, and persuade in meaningful ways. The conference will include thought-provoking keynotes from leaders in academia and industry, peer-reviewed paper presentations, panel sessions (including academic and industry discussions), innovative workshops, roundtable discussions, and exhibitions of games and prototypes.

Paper, Panel, Poster, Roundtable, Workshop, and Game Submissions are sought from both researchers and practitioners in academia and industry. Graduate and advanced undergraduate students are also encouraged to submit either jointly with an academic/member of industry or alone.

Details on the conference, including the call for submissions, is available at:
http://meaningfulplay.msu.edu

A good digital prototype convinces us of its reality and compels us to make it real. It is an imaginative piece of visual fiction that excites our interest and sates our needs.  It does not exist, but we want to it to exist. It has not been made, but we are eager for its production.  If you have succeeded at proposing an engaging idea, we want to check our accounts to find a way to afford it, our maps to figure out a way to visit it, or an encyclopedia for its nearest substitute. 

A good digital prototype is a proof of concept so convincing that we want t it to be real. As project stakeholders, we are willing to invest money and resources into it. We are so excited by its potential reality that we are willing to takes risks to make it work.  It is not merely an illustration; it is a perfect fiction to which we excitedly subscribe.  Much like the digital prototype in engineering, it is plausible, not merely possible. It is proof of a possibility, illustrative of the probable wonder in a previously unpresented solution. 

More information . . . .

The IGDA will be awarding 25 scholarships for this years Game Developers Conference. GDC is where game development professionals gather to share ideas and build the skills that the industry needs. Located in  San Francisco ,  California , this years GDC will be held March 9-13 2010.

Qualifications & Scholarship Details

• Scholarship applications must be submitted on or before Thursday, January 15th, 2010.
• Only full-time university (or similar) students are eligible, and must be 18 years of age or older as of March 9, 2010
• Applicant must be an IGDA Student Member in good standing. If you are not currently a Student Member, you must join the IGDA before applying for the scholarship. All applications will be verified.
• Past scholarship recipients are not eligible.
• Recipients will be awarded one Main Conference Pass, with access to all sessions, round-tables, and keynotes. Breakfast and lunch included.
• Students are responsible for all travel arrangements and related costs.
• Scholarship applications will be judged by a panel of professional game developers.
• Each scholarship recipient will be paired with an industry mentor.
• Scholarship recipients will participate in a local studio visit and orientation session.
• Recipients will be announced before February 4th, 2010 (the early rate pricing deadline).