Village Gamer

The sun is shining, it’s Friday, we’ve been enjoying ourselves at GDC Canada, and will be heading over there shortly to catch a few more sessions and make some new friends before heading over to the Women In Games Vancouver mixer tonight at the Century Restaurant and Bar (432 Richards Street), which was made possible in part by our very supportive friends over at AnnexPro. I can’t head out to the conference though without sharing this video with all of you. Social Media crazy guy Ryan has been helping us garner a little more attention at this year’s GDC event, and I think he’s doing a great job, don’t you?

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhgVv6XElN0]

I’ll be posting a GDC Canada wrap summary over the weekend, but I just wanted to say that I attended one of the most entertaining sessions ever yesterday – but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what it was. Want a hint? It had to do with a game dev staple that has the power to either fully engage or completely disconnect your audience from your title. This seminar should be compulsory at every studio who has this important aspect in their games.

The SIGGRAPH Vancouver Chapter May 18th presentation of Designing Assassin’s Creed 2 is now completely sold out. The group has also announced that tickets for a special May 25th presentation of Alice In Wonderland: Creating Underland are now on sale. This session will feature Sony Pictures Imageworks’ lead animation director David Schaub, who will give you an inside look behind the talent and tools that were used to create Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland.

Interactive Ontario has announced that the full schedule for INplay, the brand new conference about the business and art of kids digital media and interactivity, is now available online for your perusal.

On May 18 and 19 at the Liberty Grand in Toronto, INplay will feature keynote presentations, panel discussions and lectures from leaders in the kids entertainment industry, covering a range of sectors including video games, online platforms, and mobile properties, and how they relate to toys, books, and TV/Film. INplay will examine these topics through three conference streams: Business, Creativity and Content, and Research.

Here are some speakers and session highlights for INplay 2010:

Keynote Speakers:

· Paul & Peter Reynolds, Co-Founders, FableVision
· Jon Berrett, executive producer & Christian Jacobs, co-founder, director and writer Yo Gabba Gabba
· Alex Manu, Sr. Partner and Chief Imaginator, InnoSpa International Partners

Panel Participants, presenters and lecturers:

· David Glen, Executive Producer of Children’s Multiplatform TV, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
· Chris Muscarella, Public Relations and Production, Do Crew
· Gerry Gouy, Senior Director, Business Development, International Digital Media at MTV Networks International
· Susan Rich, Editor-at-Large, Little Brown Books for Young Readers & HarperCollins Children’s Books NY
· William Weil, Co-Founder & CEO, Tales2Go
· Michael H. Levine, Ph.D., Executive Director, Joan Ganz Cooney Center
· Jeremie Bernard, Founder / President, Emerging Playgrounds
· Nicole Rustad, Kids Helping Kids Manager, Disney Online Studios Canada
· James Jones, VP, Digital Media & Gaming, Hasbro, Inc.
· Judy Perry, Research Manager, MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program

Session Highlights:

· The Future of Reading
· Life is Tweet: A primer on youth and social media
· Navigating the Mobile Matrix: Learning your mobile ABC’s
· Game Design: What makes effective online play?
· Cutting Edge Research: Virtual & Augment Realities
· Preschool Play and Games
· Writing for the Digital Future
· Toys, Toys, Toys: product design in a digital age
· Kids and Privacy: What are you doing with my stuff?
· Getting the Word Out: A look at social media and the parent blogger community

If you are a Canadian New Media company looking to expand overseas, here is an upcoming webinar that will be of interest to you. Presented as part of the Ready Set Grow webinar series, this webinar will will connect you with market experts and key players in the New Media scene that will provide answers to questions such as what does global economy recovery mean for my New Media company and how can your company make the most of the current situation to grow or sustain your business activities?

Presented in part by Export Development Canada, this webinar is free, and if you want more information on the following topics, it’s a session I would highly recommend for you.

* The trends driving opportunities for Canadian New Media companies
* How to discover these opportunities
* How companies like you deal with the challenges of entering a new market
* What EDC is doing for the New Media sector in Canada and how it contributes to the growth of companies just like you

Register online now, this webinar is scheduled for Tuesday, May 18th and will run from 1:30 – 2:30pm EDT.

If your site has a target audience for our younger citizens, we would like to direct you to the Kinsa Site Certification Program. The Kinsa Site Certification Program, through a partnership with CATAAlliance, offers ongoing website analysis for subscribers to keep up with changing content on your website. When your website is approved with the first analysis you will receive the official Kinsa stamp of certification which is encoded into your website to show browsers that your site has been approved. Your site will be listed on Kinsa’s list of approved sites on the Kinsa website.

The Kinsa Site Certification Program logo demonstrates to your customers that Kinsa staff have analyzed your website and its content and found that there was no inappropriate material for children. Their logo also identifies your company as a supportive member of the Kinsa Global Team and as such your company’s logo is added to the Kinsa Members section.

Kinsa, a registered Canadian charity founded in 2004, helps to find, rescue and heal child victims of abuse whose images are shared on the Internet. These are children in our neighbourhoods, across the country, and around the world. Funds raised from the Kinsa Site Certification Program directly support the training of police officers from developing nations to find, rescue and heal child victims of abuse whose images are shared on the Internet.

Kinsa works with Canadian law enforcement agencies and other partners to train police officers in developing countries, giving them the expertise to find and rescue these vulnerable, unidentified children. The rescue of 10 Canadian children and the arrest of a New Brunswick man, is directly attributable to the global teamwork Kinsa fosters. Once rescued, victims and their families receive support to help them heal through the Mothers Online Movement (MOM), a powerful community network.