Crazy Backyard Mushroom

I’m not fully sure when it began to grow, but it has now been a staple curiosity of the backyard ecosystem for several weeks now and has even spawned several unsucessful artistic forays. Behold something straight out of my imagining of Lewis Carroll’s imaginings.

The image links to the Flikr set of other production shots. I wont give away too much, as I know many of the students are hoping to get their creation aired in other places and it is simply delightful to discover the “underlying system and structure” of this creative collaborative creation. I guess just looking at the cast might do that, but I digress. Congratulations to everyone featured in the event, and to those groups in particular that simply made incredible creative contributions.

Level 84 Info:
Executive Producer: James Biddle
Directed and written by: Zack Goulet
Assistant Director: Rachel Kohl
Directors of Photography: Megan Mitchell, Rebekah Cheyne

Mark- Kiley Dorton
Louie- Bryan Redding
Amber- Elly Prothero
Big B- Brandon Wentz
Toad- Gary Holbrook
Hammer Bros- Jordan Thomas
Henry- Rob Kohl

Pat also mentioned that she is working with the ICA and communication scholars more generally in developing a set of Fair Use best practices for comm. scholarship. On November 11th, the SfSM will be releasing a set of best practices for Media Literacy Education.

Ultimately, Fair Use comes down to practice. One quote in particular stuck in my head, “Fair Use is like a muscle, it grows with use.” Fortunately for us as well, that in many cases judges are interested in serving the balance between copyright holders and creators. The process for going about developing these best practices are several:

1. Find out what the problem is, or if you have a problem.
2. Show the field that there is a problem.
3. Brainstorm best practices.
4. Publish and publicize the developed code of best practices.

What is impressive is that many industries, have adopted these sets of best practices, they are hungry for them, because in many cases insurers of errors and omissions will also handle fair use claims, which protects organizations. Broadcasters, cablecasters, filmmakers, and web companies have adopted these best practices already.

One of the elements that continues to concern me is two things. The first is that I wonder what the long term consequences of most copyright court cases being settled out of court will be. Because our legal system is one based on precedent, and we cannot ultimately make the argument about First Amendment rights without first being taken to court and having the case tried is problematic. The second concern I have is that there are significant efforts being made to deteriorate young people’s understanding of Fair Use. There are active endeavours by organizations like the ESA’s ©Team efforts. These misinformation tactics deteriorate Fair Use. They atrophy the base muscles which many are hoping to grow. Perhaps a set of best ethical practices for copyright holding industries ought to be developed as well.

What bothered me about it though, was that for the most part the divide was not explicitly questioned. Even when I asked them to speak about it, only one presenter addressed the issue. One of the presenters mentioned “compartmentalization” as a limiting factor of bringing games into curriculum, yet seeing the disconnect between their students and other disciplines was clear.

There was also an interesting conversation about game design, critical thinking, and young adults involved in the (co)production of New Media. Unfortunately the conversation eventually landed on brain scans of students engaging with New Media, one of the more untested, unproven, and problematic means by which to study engagement or mental processes.

I was also concerned by what was generally discussed as the “consumer/producer” division. In many ways things like Blogger and Facebook have brought new people into the (co)producer role of media production. What I hesitate about is that in many cases students still see themselves bound in by platforms, rather than attempting to stress them or push them in new directions. Perhaps I’m creating a heirarchy of production and ultimately saying that some kinds of production matter than others, and this is important because the kinds of production I’m encouraging pushes at critique I suppose. Maybe that is elitist or marginalizing, but I’m not sure how to resolve that.

“You can’t buy attention anymore.” We now have to create entertaining things. But part of this is really about how do you get people interested and invested in media in new and different ways. One of the things that he hasn’t mentioned here is that it changes the relationship between the users and corporations.

Also related to this was what he talked about as:

• The real world is becoming more virtual.
• The virtual world is becoming more real.

He used the example of the Unity game engine which is bringing compelling virtual experiences to numerous other devices. But that again the idea is more fundamental. How do you bring design to bear that encourages user participation. He used examples from Fubar.com, the online MMO Gaia, Enitechlabs.com, and others to bring users to be engaged in media in different ways.

Of course the catch is that with traditional media you can buy your way to success, but with social media, you’re not guaranteed to be a hit and it takes a lot of significant work. I asked about the difficulty that this provides especially for established companies and brands. The answer was more that companies were not ready for something like this. I think there is more there than was really addressed, but that is a topic for down the road.

The conversations were great and the keynotes idea inspiring. Jon Ruppel’s “Renaissance of User Interfaces” talk was extremely well done, making use of a WiiMote (via the Wii2Flash interface) to control much of the presentation. Many of the UI innovations and noodling that he talked about he also demonstrated from within his slide presentation. The variety of UI prototypes he was a able to demonstrate using Flash were particularly impressive. Much of their development is done using Flash and Silverlight.

Sean Bunner from the Home Shopping Network (HSN) talked about some of the realities of taking innovative UI design into the home, or as he discussed into the LCM (least common denominator). He listed factor such as ROI, Legal, IT, time, politics, and idiots making innovation particularly difficult. Also factored into this was the complex issue of the CRM or core customer. But at the same time, these structures and limitations sometimes gives you an opportunity to innovate in different ways. Not to mention of course that the LCM = $$.

The games panel which I participated in was spirited and interesting. The other members of the panel were fun to listen to and the audience was very engaged. Though I didn’t get to really meet her until after my talk, several people said that I practically introduced and explained why everyone should go to Patricia Aufderheide’s talk on Saturday morning. Oddly I’d met her earlier in the day and walked along River Street in Savannah without quite realizing who she was.

SCAD’s facilities are excellent and the food and drinks have also been quite nice so far. I was only minorly disappointed that there was no beer at the reception, though that was quickly dashed at the sheer variety of wines they offered in stead. Dinner at the Bayou club was full of both laughs and insights, or as Scott said this morning, we won the fun dinner award for Night 1.

The new place is great, though we have been cleaning for nearly two days straight. The kitties are adjusting well, although the new washer and dryer will soon be invading their space.

More pictures soon.

The first plenary session opened a bit slow, but I’ve decided that it had more to do with the frigid temperatures in the pavilion, rather than any particular fault of the speakers. Rich Taylor of the ESA, Asante Bradford (who also doubled as MC for the panel) of the GA Department of Economic Development, and Blake Lewin of Turner R&D brought together a panel that at first seemed a bit disjointed, but ultimately came together quite nicely.

I think ultimately it was Blake Lewin who hit the nail on the head. Though I’m not quoting him, he seemed to identify how particularly important the balance between the rights of users and developers/publishers is going to be to the future of the videogame industry. At several points the recording industry’s lack of capability to work within and around these changes brought laughs from the crowd. But really, it is just as important for the videogame industry, perhaps even more important.

I have to wonder that if the game industry does not tackle these big issues, DRM, Region Lockout, Format Wars, System Lock-in, and the list goes on, they’re not going to be able to meet the call that many are making, that games will characterize media for the next century just as radio and television characterized media in the previous century. It’s not a problem that is going to get solved here in Atlanta this weekend, but it’s going to be felt most acutely in places like this, where burgeoning industries are attempting to evolve.

I’m actually impressed by Jott’s inability to translate this one. I mean, who does toss the totr?

The amusing thing is that I Jott’ed, “Who tows the tow-truck?” As we were driving down

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