The Women in Games 2008 conference didn’t just concentrate on the issue of women getting jobs in the game industry, or how to balance the workforce. Issues brought up included the state of serious games, and some analysis of particular games people worked on with special attention to those with broad appeal (such as Singstar and others), women gamers (including mothers, and skinners), and the state of women in games abroad (such as in Iran), kids and gaming, psychological research, industry research and many other topics.

Most of these are brief notes from the conference (I’m sorry if I missed important points, I need to hone my note taking skills!), set up in the conference proceeding order. The pictures are not too good, next time I’ll be brave and use my flash (although in the ones I used flash it wasn’t much better, just darker since I was so far back. Need to get nearer too!).

Day 1 – September 10th

• KEYNOTE – Sara de Freitas – Director of Research at the Serious Games Institute at the University of Coventry
• “Hunting for Fun – The Serious Games Challenge” Mary Matthews, Strategy and Business Development Director, TruSim (Blitz)
• “Diagetic Media’ – Beyond First-Person Shooters” Ana Kronschnabl, CEO, FluffyLogic
• PANEL – “Getting down with the kids!” Chair : Divinia Knowles, Head Of Operations and Financial Controller, Mind Candy Ltd. Panelists : Toby Barnes, Managing Director, Pixel Lab; Louise Ridgeway, Animation Supervisor, Rare Ltd; Rachel Bardill, Interactive Executive, CBBC
• WORKSHOP – “The Pink Wink Workshop” – Fiona French, Course Leader BSc Computer Games, Associate Director; and Barbara Zambrini, Producer : Gamelab London, London Metropolitan University
• “Women in Games: an Iranian Perspective” Ms Faranak Fotouhi-Ghazvini, PhD student, Department of Electronic Imaging and Media Communications, School of Informatics, University of Bradford
• “Playing with Constrained Agency: Video Games and the Question of “Choice”” – Juliette M. Ludeker, PhD Student, Rhetoric and Composition, English Dept, Purdue University and Wendy K.Z. Anderson Doctoral Candidate, Rhetorical and New Media Studies, Humanities Dept, Michigan Technological University
• “Play in between: Women player identifies and the practice of skin making” Hanna Wirman, PhD Student, University of the West of England
• “Mama Ludens: Interviews with women who play” – Jessica Enevold, Visiting Assistant Professor, IT University of Copenhagen; Charlotte Hagström, Assistant Professor, Lund University and Espen Aarseth, Associate Professor, IT university of Copenhagen
• KEYNOTE – “Development and Play – Do Women do it differently?” Paulina Bozek, Executive Producer, SingStar, Sony

Day 2 – September 11th

• KEYNOTE – “Technology in Schools: Why do girls get turned off?” – Eileen Brown, Evangelism Manager, Microsoft
• “Girls and Gadgets: The Future” – Alison Brown, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing, University of Teesside
• “Girls get EX.I.T.Ed by IT” – Helena Pugsley, Software Group IT Service Manager, IBM Hursley Software Development Laboratories
• “Motivating Young Women in Game Development Via the Pixels, Programming, Play and Pedagogy Project” – Scott Leutenegger, Professor and Game Development Program Director, Computer Science Department, University of Denver
• “Turning girls on to Technology: the Role of Professional Societies” – Cornelia Boldyreff, Professor of Software Engineering, Department of Computing and InformaticsUniversity of Lincoln (and member of BCSWomen committee )
• DISCUSSION – “A Vision for Science and Society : influencing the government’s new consultation paper” – Ruth Wilson, Resources and Partnerships Coordinator Services for Women Team, UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology
• KEYNOTE – “Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society” – Karen Brennan – Graduate student and research assistant at MIT Media Lab in the Lifelong Kindergarten group
• “IBM’s INNOV8 and PowerUp” – Kevin Farrar, Programme Manager, IBM Academic Initiative, NE Europe, IBM Hursley Software Development Laboratories
• “Play to learn: Designing games with kids for kids” – Hilary Hall, Executive Producer, Illumina Digital Ltd
• “Soft Skills Please! The importance of management training” – John Nash, Art Manager, Blitz Games Studios
• “What skills are needed to work in the games industry?” – Bev Bush, Senior Lecturer in Games Design, University of Central Lancashire
• PANEL – “From boys’ toys to girls’ games: attracting more women into games” – Chair : Natasha Angelopoulou, Senior Lecturer in Computer Science, University of Westminster. Panelists : Nick Burton, Senior Software Engineer, Rare Ltd; Cornelia Boldyreff, Professor of Software Engineering, Department of Computing and Informatics, University of Lincoln (and member of BCSWomen committee ); Dr Alexandra Psarrou, Head of AI and Multimedia Department, School of Computer Science, University of Westminster; Aurore Dimopoulos, Student (BSc Computer Games), School of Computer Science, University of Westminster, and QA Tester (TT Games Publishing)
• Warwick Castle – Conference Dinner. Included in the photos are the visit to Warwick Castle and the banquet, and to download also are 3 videos from the night – Are e do are e do (singing), the rules and some comedy, and finally the Lord Oliver the Vegetarian tasting the meat, since he’s a supposed poisoner.

Day 3 – September 12th

• KEYNOTE : Karen Clark – Project Manager, BioWare
• “How can a design Wiki serve a game dev team?” – Emmeline Dobson, Game Designer, NiK NaK, Kuju
• “Women working in games: developing a model of influences” – Julie Prescott, PhD student, University of Liverpool
• “Passion, women and the games industry : influences on women’s participation in the Australian Digital Content Industry” – Ruth Christie, Associate Professor, Course Coordinator – Bachelor of Games and Interactive Entertainment, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
• “From Italy to the video game industry in the UK” – Simona Tassinari, Software Engineer, Rare Ltd
• OPEN Meeting – Futures – Open to all – to discuss future direction(s) of Women In Games conference. Chair : Steering committee