Those of us in the general media area will know of the EUs MEDIA programme which aims to support the development and circulation of European media works. This includes interactive works.

A call for project ideas has been made and may be worth checking out as a source of funding.

For financial year 2008 the deadline is 15/04/2008 which is close but if you had a project idea ready to go it would be worth checking out.

There is a MEDIA desk in Ireland which provides support and can answer questions about participating in such projects.

See www.irishfilmboard.ie/financing/MEDIA_Desk_Ireland/27 for more info.

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The MEDIA 2007 programme has the global objectives:

– to preserve and promote European cultural and linguistic diversity and its cinematographic and audiovisual heritage, to guarantee its access to the public and to promote dialogue between cultures;

– to increase the circulation and audience of European audiovisual works within and

outside of the Union;

– to reinforce the competitiveness of the European audiovisual sector within the

framework of an open and competitive European market.

The current Call for Proposals has the specific objective of promoting, by providing

financial support, the development of production projects intended for European and

international markets presented by independent European production companies in

the following categories: on and off-line interactive works, including works

developed for computers, consoles, handheld consoles and mobile handsets.

Info here, for those that are interested:

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/media/producer/develop/interactive/index_en.htm

The annual IIA conference should be of interest to some.

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BEYOND WEBSITES: BUSINESS USES OF SOCIAL NETWORKING AND NEW MEDIA

The IIA national Congress will be held on Thursday, 15 May this year in Croke Park Conference Centre, Dublin 3. The theme of Congress 2008 is “Beyond Websites: Business Uses of Social Networking and New Media”.

Congress 2008 will show the impact that social networking has had on business, successful integration of social networking into organisations’ business models and why it takes its rightful place as part of any company’s business tools.

Speakers will include leading industry professionals from Bebo, Dell, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Microsoft, IGOpeople.com and Worldwide Cycles.

View the full programme at http://www.iia.ie/events/iia-congress/programme/

Early Bird Tickets

Book before 11 April to get the Early Bird rate of €195 for Members and €245 for Non-Members.

Your ticket covers access to all the plenary and breakout sessions, web strategy clinics, exhibition and networking areas, and all breaks, lunch and post-conference drinks reception.

The Developer Developer Developer Ireland event is a general IT developer event being held in GMIT in Galway on the 3rd of May. The event is free.

Sessions being given by industry experts from the .NET developer community and include ‘WCF in Depth’ and sessions on ADO.NET, programming in C#, Visual Studio and object orientated programming.

For more see http://dddireland.com

Online registration at http://www.snipurl.com/DDDIreland

Sandbox Symposium 08

Call for Participation

The third annual ACM SIGGRAPH Sandbox Symposium on videogames calls for papers, panel proposals, and presentations. We are looking for work that describes or illustrates innovative research in videogame theory, practice, and criticism.

Video games are a singular technological medium, comparable in cultural impact to the telephone, television or the Internet. What are the creative, technological, and commercial challenges facing this medium in the future? How do we relate great stories that leverage advances in technology? What is the continuing impact of this medium on individuals and society?

We seek original papers from the creative and technical communities that develop videogames and from academic researchers who study videogames and relevant technologies and disciplines. We also invite proposals for panel discussions. Selected papers will be those judged to have the greatest potential for impact on the practice of videogame development. All papers should meet the standards of their respective disciplines and will be peer-reviewed. For an indication of the conference’s breadth, please visit sandbox.siggraph.org for a look at last year’s program.

Suggested Topics

Real-time animation and computer graphics for video games
Distributed simulation and communication in multi-player games
Game console hardware, software, tools, and middleware
Psychophysics and user interfaces
Artificial intelligence in games
Interactive physics
Uses of GPU for non-graphical algorithms in games
Multi-processor techniques for games
Speech and vision processing as user input techniques
Development tools and techniques
Procedural art
Sound Design and music in games
Mathematical Game Theory applied to video games
Cinematography in games
Game design and game genres
Story structure (setting, plot, character, theme) in games and interactive fiction
Games (e.g., Casual, Serious, Mobile, Networked, Alternative Reality, Pervasive)
Legal, political, and societal impacts
Women and diversity in games
Gamer culture and community (e.g., modding communities, LAN parties, creative gamer content and machinima)
Independent game developers
Economics and business models in the game industry
Game production and labor
Papers

Please submit full papers (maximum 8 pages). All papers will be reviewed by an independent review committee, which will provide written feedback on each paper.

Panel Proposals

Proposals for panel discussions should include a statement of purpose (1 page) and 3-5 participants. Each participant should provide a biography and a brief discussion (2-4 paragraphs) of the topic under discussion.

Presentations

In addition we seek demonstrations of innovative projects and/or previews of unreleased videogame titles. Presentations should be two minutes in length and must show gameplay. Use Quicktime format, either NTSC (480p) or HDTV (720p).

Submissions

The web site for submissions is sandbox.siggraph.org. The deadline for paper and panel submissions is March 24, 2008. The deadline for presentations (see above) submissions is June 30, 2008.

All submissions should be PDF or DOC format and follow the SIGGRAPH style rules and Instructions for Authors (www.siggraph.org/publications/instructions).

Location

Sandbox 08 will be co-located with SIGGRAPH 08 and will start August 9, 2008 in Los Angeles, California. More details about location, times, and dates will be posted on the conference website.

Organization

If you have questions, please contact the conference chair, Dave Schwartz (585-475-5521, dis at it dot rit dot edu).