Public Lecture and Design Workshop at the Games Academy

Berlin, Germany

The Games Academy is a small but rapidly-growing educational institution in Berlin, which draws students from all over Europe. On July 30th I gave a lecture entitled The Industry and the Academy: Challenges and Opportunities, which was open to the general public, and the next day I conducted my day-long game design workshop with the students at the Academy. They were mostly experienced gamers and had already had some game design training, so the workshop offered them an opportunity to put their skills to use.

One-day Seminar at the Academy of Converging Media

Berlin, Germany

This was the second year that I had a chance to work with the Academy of Converging Media. I presented two lectures, "Problems with Justice in Online Communities," and "Fundamental Principles of Game Design," which is the introduction to my game design workshop. My audience was a small group of new media students from all over Europe. It's always fun to give a design workshop to people who aren’t that familiar with video games, because you can watch them absorbing new ideas at a tremendous rate. They came up with some great stuff. The game ideas they were given were "run the CIA" and "experience being a film director."/span>

Lecture to the Pennsylvania Governor's School for Information Technology

Videoconference from the University of Surrey to Drexel University, Pennsylvania

This was my third year in a row for giving a talk to the PGSIT via videoconference link from the University of Surrey. We had a slight technical hitch, but otherwise it went very well. The PGSIT is a residential summer school for talented high school students in Pennsylvania, concentrating on information technology issues. Each year they have a career day in which they talk to people from industry. I gave them a one-hour talk (twice, to two groups) about how the game industry works and what kinds of careers are available.