The Convergence Culture Consortium holds at least one major event every academic year, designed to bring together leaders from both academia and industry. Each event provides attendees with insights, opportunities, intellectual stimulation and a whole lot of fun.
Below you'll find links to new events and archived events. C3 also invites interested parties to attend public events presented by CMS and the MIT Communications Forum. For more information on CMS and Communications Forum events, please visit cms.mit.edu/events.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Futures of Entertainment 5 - TBA
Stay tuned for details regarding the next Futures of Entertainment conference.
PAST EVENTS
Futures of Entertainment 4
November 20 - 21, 2009 - MIT
E25-111 (MIT Medical Center – 1st Floor)
E51-345 (Tang Center – 3rd Floor)
Convergence has moved swiftly from buzzword to industry logic.
The creation of transmedia storyworlds, understanding how to appeal to migratory audiences, and the production of digital extensions
for traditional materials are becoming t
he bread and butter of working in the media. Futures of Entertainment 4 once again brings together
key industry leaders whoare shaping these new directions in our culture and academic scholars immersed in the investigation the social, cultural,
political, economic, and technological implications of these changes in our media landscape. Drawing industry and academic speakers together with researchers from the Convergence Culture Consortium, Futures of Entertainment 4 provides a unique opportunity to participate in dynamic discussions about the future entertainment and media landscape. Organized around a “talk-show” style model, with panelists participating in moderated discussions about key issues affecting the future of the culture and creative industries, Futures of Entertainment 4 brings clever thinkers from both industry and the academy together for long conversations. Over the last three years this has produced deep, thorough treatments of issues ranging from the ethics of social media, effective strategies for participating in virtual worlds, the future of media metrics and measurement, and the challenges of building compelling transmedia experiences.
Speakers at this year’s event include:
David Bausola – Co-founder of Ag8
Nancy Baym – University of Kansas
Brian Clark – Partner and CEO, GMD Studios
Stephen Duncombe – NYU, author of Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in the Age of Fantasy (The New Press)
Dan Goldman – Illustrator of Shooting War (Grand Central Publishing [US] and Weidenfeld & Nicolson [UK])
Noessa Higa – Visionaire Media
Jennifer Holt – UC Santa Barbara, co-editor of Media Industries (Wiley-Blackwell)
Victoria Jaye – Acting Head of Fiction & Entertainment Multiplatform Commissioning, BBC
Derek Johnson – University of North Texas
Brian Larkin – Milbank Barnard College
JuYoung Lee – Chief Scientist, ACE Metrix
Jason Mittell – Middlebury College
Avner Ronen – CEO, Boxee
Frank Rose – Wired contributor and author of Welcome to the Hyperdrome (W. W. Norton, forthcoming)
Lori Sammy – Racebending
Andrew Slack – The Harry Potter Alliance
Louisa Stein – San Diego State University
Jordan Weisman – CEO and Founder, Smith & Tinker
Mark Zogorski – Chief Revenue Officer, eXelate Media
Futures of Entertainment 3
November 21-22, 2008 Bartos Theater, MIT
Convergence culture has moved swiftly from buzzword to industry logic. The creation of transmedia storyworlds, understanding how to appeal to migratory audiences, and the production of digital extensions for traditional materials are becoming the bread and butter of working in the media. Futures of Entertainment 3 brings together key industry leaders who are shaping these new directions in our culture and academic scholars immersed in the investigation the social, cultural, political, economic, and technological implications of these changes in our media landscape.
This year's conference will work to bring together the themes from last year - media spreadability, audiences and value, social media, distribution - with the Consortium's new projects as we move towards an increasingly global understanding of media convergence and content flows. Topics for this year's panels include global distribution systems and the challenges of moving content across borders, transmedia, franchising, digital extensions and world building, comics, convergence and commerce, social media and spreadability, as well as renewed discussion about how and why to measure audience value.
Registration for the conference is open at the conference website!
Confirmed speakers for this year's conference include:
- Kim Moses - Executive Producer The Ghost Whisperer
- John Caldwell - UCLA, Production Culture (Duke University Press)
- Henry Jenkins - MIT, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (NYU Press)
- Yochai Benkler - Harvard Law School, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale University Press)
- Anne White - VP Programming & Creative, PRN by Thomson
- Anita Elberse - Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Marketing unit at Harvard Business School
- Sabrina Calouri - Director, Marketing and Promotions of HBO online
- Renée Ann Richardson - Harvard Business School
- Alex McDowell - Production Designer, Watchmen
- Kevin Slavin - Area/Code
- Grant McCracken - Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture (Indiana University Press)
- Donald K Ranvaud - Buena Onda Films
- Amanda Lotz - University of Michigan, The Television Will be Revolutionized (NYU Press)
- Gail De Kosnik - UC Berkeley, The Survival of Soap Opera: Strategies for a Digital Age (With Sam Ford and C. Lee Harrington)
- Joe Marchese - socialvibe.com
- Amber Case - Cyborg Anthropologist and Social Media Consultant, Hazelnut Consulting
- Mauricio Mota - New Content (Brazil)
- Alisa Perren - Georgia State University, The Media Industry Studies Book (Blackwell Publishing)
- Sharon Ross - Columbia College Chicago Beyond the Box: Television and the Internet (Wiley-Blackwell)
- Nancy Baym - University of Kansas, Personal Connections in a Digital Age (Polity Press)
- Alice Marwick - New York University
- Vu Nguyen - VP of Business Development, crunchyroll.com
- Lance Weiler - Director Head Trauma and The Last Broadcast
- Gregg Hale - Producer Seventh Moon and The Blair Witch Project
- Tom Boland - Director of Interactive Marketing, World Wrestling Entertainment
- Tom Casiello - Daytime Emmy Award-Winning former writer of As the World Turns, One Life to Live, Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless
- Peter Kim - Dachis Corporation
Futures of Entertainment 2
November 16-17, 2007 Bartos Auditorium, MIT
The logics of convergence culture are quickly becoming
ubiquitous within the media world. Audiences are being encouraged to
participate in a wider range of sites. Transmedia principals are being
adopted by content producers in a broad range of fields. 'Engagement'
is being discussed as crucial to measurements of success. Futures
of Entertainment 2 brings together key industry players who
are shaping these new directions in our culture with academics
exploring their implications. This year's conference will consider
developments in advertising, cult media, metrics, measurement, and
accounting for audiences, cultural labor and audience relations, and
mobile platform development.
Scheduled speakers include:
- Jesse Alexander (Heroes)
- Danny Bilson (The Rocketeer)
- Marc Davis (Yahoo!)
- Mark Deuze (Indiana U)
- Tina Wells (Buzz Marketing Group)
The official conference site is available at http://convergenceculture.org/futuresofentertainment.
Convergence 2007: Collaboration 2.0
April 21, 2007 MIT
Collaboration marks Convergence
Culture. The working together of platforms, industries, audiences,
producers, and consumers is a hallmark of the current media
environment. Hosted by the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT, Collaboration
2.0 explored models of collaboration, co-creation and the
opportunities for brand revival within convergence culture.
This event brought together researchers from both national and international universities to explore best practice models of mobilizing user-generated content and activating audiences as co-creators, to look at the impact active audiences can have on brands and consider new modes for engaging the audience. The event provided an opportunity for members of the Consortium to talk to C3 researchers, academics and other consortium members about the reshaping of the industry.
Speakers at Collaboration 2.0 included:
- Jean Burgess (Queensland University of Technology)
- John Banks (Queensland University of Technology)
- Kevin Sandler (University of Arizona)
- Robert Kozinets (York University)
For more information, please see our weblog entries from the conference:
- Collaboration 2.0: An Introduction
- Collaboration 2.0: Sam Ford and Soap Operas
- Collaboration 2.0: Henry Jenkins and Media Violence
- Collaboration 2.0: John Banks and Developer/Gamer Relationships
- Collaboration 2.0: Jean Burgess and Vernacular Creativity
- Collaboration 2.0: Kevin Sandler and Scooby Doo
- Collaboration 2.0: Robert Kozinets and Star Trek
- Collaboration 2.0: Ivan Askwith and TV's Terminology for User Engagement
Futures of Entertainment
November 17-18, 2006 Bartos Auditorium, MIT
As
advertisers look for new ways to engage audiences, content creators
search for new audiences, and audiences quest for new ways to connect
with culture, the nature of what counts as "entertainment" is rapidly
changing. We are seeing the blurring of aesthetic and technological
distinctions between media platforms, of "advertising" and "content"
and of "creator" and "consumer." Futures of Entertainment
brings together key industry leaders who are shaping these new
directions in our culture.
The inaugural Futures of Entertainment conference considered developments such as user-generated content, transmedia storytelling, the rise of mobile media and the emergence of social networking. Speakers included:
- Caterina Fake (Flickr)
- Michael Lebowitz (Big Spaceship)
- Paul Levitz (DC Comics)
- Diane Nelson (Warner Bros. Fan Relations)
- John Lester (Linden Lab)
- Robert Tercek (Multimedia Networks)
For more information, please visit the archived conference site at www.convergenceculture.org/futuresofentertainment/2006.
Convergence 2006: THERE IS NO BOX
April 2006 MIT Museum and Sloan Business School
With Henry Jenkins playing the
role of the spoon-bending child from The Matrix, Convergence
2006: THERE IS NO BOX in April 2006 got off to a bang. In a mixture
of public and private sessions conferees discussed topics including
media history, brand loyalty, fan productivity, patterns of multimedia
use, online community formation, the global television trade, marketing
in video games and the experience economy.
Drawing together consortium members, faculty, and affiliated researchers, the retreat served as a fitting end to the first year of C3, providing an opportunity for the diversity of perspectives the consortium draws upon to be appreciated. Simultaneously, the retreat began to map out the research trajectory for the second year of the endeavor. An overview of presentations from the event is available on an archived entry on our Weblog.






