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 3

November 21-22, 2008     Wong Auditorium 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

Past Events

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.