This month's special guest speakers for our September Virtual Worlds for Stakeholder Engagement Group meeting are
Eric Gordon, PhD and Steven Schirra of the Engagement Game Lab at Emerson College (
http://engagementgamelab.org). Join us to hear about Eric and Steven's exciting work on place-based digital communities, media and urbanism, and games for civic engagement.
When: Wednesday, September 8
Time: 16:00-17:00 Eastern (New York) / 20:00-21:00 GMT
Check www.WorldTimeServer.com for your respective time zone
Please RSVP by Tuesday, September 9 to beth@publicdecisions.com; Beth will send you the SLURL in Second Life so you can attend. *You must have a Second Life account (they're free) and an avatar in order to participate in this meeting*
About Eric Gordon and Steven Schirra
Eric Gordon, PhD, Director, is an associate professor of new media at Emerson College. His work focuses on place-based digital communities, media and urbanism, and games for civic engagement. He is the author of The Urban Spectator: American Concept Cities from Kodak to Google (Dartmouth College Press, 2010) and a forthcoming book with Adriana de Souza e Silva about location-based media (Blackwell, 2011). He edited a special issue of Space and Culture on the topic of "The Geography of Virtual Worlds", exploring the ideas of how location matters even in the most virtual of conditions. On related topics, he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study the use of digital backchannels in the classroom. He continues to explore how these significant shifts in the attention economy are changing the classroom, the community and the city. Visit him at placeofsocialmedia.com.
Steven Schirra, Project Coordinator and Researcher,
handles the day-to-day workflow of the lab and our current project,
Community PlanIt. He recently worked as a researcher and content
developer for the Participatory Chinatown project, which had its
community debut in May 2010. He is an instructor in Emerson College's
Writing, Literature, and Publishing Department, from which he received
his master's in 2009. He is interested in new media literacies, game
studies, and the role that new media and games play in community/civic
engagement processes.
