Welcome to the second newsletter for IE2005: Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment * The program for the conference is now available from http://research.it.uts.edu.au/creative/ie/05 * Registration for IE2005 is now open. Please register as soon as you know you will be attending IE2005, so we can better plan the catering and social events. We don't want to run out of coffee during the coffee breaks * Addition invited speakers: Tracy Fullerton will be speaking at IE2005 on Wednesday, November 23rd Tracy Fullerton is a game designer, educator and writer with over a decade of professional experience. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Interactive Media Division of the USC School of Cinema-Television where she serves as Co-Director of the new Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab. Tracy is the author of Game Design Workshop: Designing, Prototyping and Playtesting Games, a design textbook in use at game programs worldwide. Tracy's work has received numerous industry honors including best Family/Board Game from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, ID Magazine's Interactive Design Review, Communication Arts Interactive Design Annual, several New Media Invision awards, iMix Best of Show, the Digital Coast Innovation Award, IBC's Nombre D'Or, and Time Magazine's Best of the Web. In December 2001, she was featured in the Hollywood Reporter's "Women in Entertainment Power 100" issue. Tracy will be part of the X|Media|Lab Singapore and Melbourne. Many thanks to Brendan Harkin who has made her stop over at IE2005 possible. (Unconfirmed) Mark Meadows Artist-in-Residence Xerox-PARC, Stanford Research Institute, Lucasfilm, Sony Pictures, and Microsoft Mark Stephen Meadows (also known as pighed) works at the point where visual art, literature, and computer interactivity coincide. He has spent time at Xerox-PARC as Artist-in-Residence, Stanford Research Institute, and has co-founded three companies that relate to artificial intelligence, interactive narrative, or virtual reality. His 3D animation and interactive designs have been flown by a list of companies that include Lucasfilm, Sony Pictures, and Microsoft. Since 1987 he has been selling his artwork in galleries and museums throughout the United States and Europe, with his work winning awards that include the Ars Electronica Golden Nica, and The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's highest honors. In 2002 he wrote, Pause & Effect; The Art of Interactive Narrative and he is currently writing a book on AI, AE, and the roles interactive characters play in emerging forms of narrative. In 2004 he founded Area10, a company that makes characters interactive. He is currently working as creative director on a 3-part video game that includes the creative talents of one the world's foremost architects, Frank Gehry, and one of the world's most influential bands, Radiohead. Mark sits on the advisory boards of three corporations and an art school involved in everything from artificial intelligence to painting to virtual architecture. Clients include AT&T Research Labs, Granada Entertainment, Intel, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Microsoft, Oracle Corporation, Sony Online, and The Santa Fe Institute. * IE2005 is now officially an ACM In-Cooperation conference. What this means is that the proceedings of IE2005 will be available from the ACM Digital Library soon after the conference. Almost all universities subscribe to ACM Digital Library and DL provides facilities for finding what papers reference your paper. * Chris Chesher is organising the panel discussion titled "'Scalded! Computer game ethics and the Hot Coffee controversy'". If you are not aware of the controversy, a quick read of Chris' article on DIGRA http://www.digra.org/hardcore/hc9 should get you up to speed for the panel discussion. * Thursday Nov 24th after the conference sessions is the relaxing time at D-Factory at the Powerhouse Museum. IE2005 attendees will be able to interact with the Beta_Space exhibit "Sonic Tai Chi" followed by a moderated panel discussion * The location of the conference dinner on Wednesday November 23rd is currently being kept secret. *** Bids for IE2006 The number of papers submitted is a strong indication that there is a thriving community on interactive entertainment and that we should continue to hold the IE conference series. If you would like to chair and organise IE2006, please email a bid to ie05@it.uts.edu.au. There is no set format for the bid, but it should include the names of key people (Chair, Local Chair, Treasurer, Publicity, ...), indicate possible venue, approximate dates, and what support would be available from the local organisation. We will announce the location and the chair of IE2006 in November at IE2005 to give people plenty of time to write their papers for IE2006. That is all for today folks! Don't forget to register for IE2005 http://research.it.uts.edu.au/creative/ie/05/ Cheers, Yusuf Pisan Conference Chair, IE2005: Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment -- Yusuf Pisan Senior Lecturer Department of Software Engineering Faculty of Information Technology University of Technology, Sydney http://staff.it.uts.edu.au/~ypisan/ ypisan[AT]it.uts.edu.au