Last chance to register for the Games for Change Festival 2011

Editor’s Note: Tides is proud to partner with Games for Change to promote this innovative conference focusing on games and play in education and social change movements.  Look for our Program Manager Irene Kao at the conference in a couple of weeks, and enjoy the information below from Game for Change Festival’s Jeff Ramos.

Registration for the 8th Annual Games for Change Festival is closing on June 11th. For those of not familiar with Games for Change, our organization is the leading global advocate for making and supporting games for social impact. Our annual Festival is an opportunity to celebrate, promote, and share what our community is developing.

Past presenters at the Festival include Honorable Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first United States Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, Pulitzer Prize winning author Nicholas Kristof – and kicking off this year’s Festival with a keynote presentation is Vice President Al Gore.

As more organizations and individuals see games as a technology that is capable of creating effective social change, I wanted to share some of the content at our upcoming Festival on June 20 – 22 in New York City that the Tides community will find valuable.

Empowering & Educating Youth
Our Pre-Festival Summit, (Monday, June 20), will feature a daylong series of workshops dedicated to educators and organizations who are looking to use games as a means to empower and educate youth in and outside of classrooms. Sponsored by the AMD, attendees of this day’s worth of programming will learn how to understand the landscape of game design and how to empower youth through games. In addition, those in the audience will participate in a hands on workshop for further understanding design, gain insight into building a community and resources, and will have a chance to view a case study of one classroom’s use of a game in its curriculum. The last day of the Festival (Wednesday, June 22) will also feature another daylong strand presented by the Games for Learning Institute.

The first day of the Festival (Tuesday, June 21), will have a focus on how large organizations and government are integrating gaming as a new technology for learning and social change. Representatives from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, UK’s Channel 4 and Littleloud, PBS Kids, and New York City’s Chief Digital Officer will be giving presentations on government funding to artists, youth and innovation, and how New York City is using technology and games to aid its citizens and public workforce.

International Development
On the international development side of things, Wednesday starts off with Pulitzer Prize winning author Sheryl WuDunn (Half the Sky), who will be leading a keynote conversation with Laura Pincus Hartman (Zynga.org ) and Pierre Guillaume Wielezynski, the Head of Web at the World Food Programme. Together they will discuss how entrepreneurs, philanthropists, academics, and business leaders can leverage popular media channels, be it games or social media, to address pressing social issues. Representatives from international institutions will also share their inspirations and interpretations of how they’ve perceived and created their own “games for change”.

June 20 – 22 is fast approaching. We invite everyone to check out the Games for Change Festival website and explore the content that will make an impact on you. As a special offer to the Tides community, register with the discount code “tides” to save 10% on registration. All Access passes are extremely limited as we are less than a week away from closing ticket sales.

Register now: http://gamesforchange.org/festival2011/attend/