UDC Conference and Media Democracy Day

At Harbour Centre, the School of Communication is hosting the international conference of the Union for Democratic Communications from October 25-28th.

Tonight, we have a public lecture keynote by Professor Saskia Sassen from Columbia University. Other highly anticipated speakers are Dan Schiller, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Dorothy Kidd, and Dee Dee Halleck. It was great to meet and greet many at last night's reception. Always nice to know people you cite are nice people on top of it all.

There's also a panel on South Korean media after lunch that I'm looking forward to attending, that includes the School's Dal Yong Jin (hey, didn't we just present last week?) and UIUC's Soochul Kim who I met during the 2004 Seoul conference on Mobility and Social Change.

Later on in the day, is the Media and Democracy Fair, promoted by our own Stephen Anderson, a grad student in Communication.
From the Facebook page:
"Come to the FREE Media Democracy Fair and meet representatives from your favorite local independent media outlets. 4:30pm – 7pm Friday October 26th at the Concourse in SFU Vancouver (Harbour Centre) 515 West Hastings Street.
The Media Democracy Fair is FREE. Admission is open for everyone. Bring your friends and family to the Media Democracy Fair and stay for the discussions.
To stay in the loop join the local media democracy Announcement Mailing List
If you represent a local media group and would like table space at the MDD please email (stephenaATsfu.ca)

Film Screening:
This year MDD presents a Special Screening "A Little Bit of So Much Truth" in room 1600 at 4:30pm (515 West Hastings Street)“When the people of Oaxaca decided they'd had enough of bad government, they didn't take their story to the media...They TOOK the media.” More about this exciting film here>>

Sponsors and Supporters:
This year’s sponsors and supporters are the SFU School of Communication, SFU Faculty of Applied Sciences, The Federation of Post-Secondary Educators (FPSE), Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group (SFPIRG), BC Government Employees Union,BC & Yukon Territory – Building Construction Trades, Council, BC Teachers’ Federation, Communications, Energy & Paperworkers Union Local 2000, Communications, Energy & Paperworkers Union Western, Region BC Federation of Labour, BC Association for Media Education (BCAME), The Tyee, CITIZENShift, Straight Goods, and Xtra West.

Special Guest:
MDD 2007 will open up a talk by Saskia Sassen, renowned author of The Global City: New Frontiers/Strategic Sites at 7:00 pm. At least 285 people are expected to attend this talk. Limited free tickets are available for the public on a first come first serve basis. (Room 1400 at SFU Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street)

AoIR 8.0 a huge success

The 8th annual meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers (“AoIR”) has just wrapped up in Vancouver. It was, by all accounts, an enormous success, despite the heavy rain that kept people indoors.

Sponsored in part by Simon Fraser University, University of Washington, and the University of Southern California, as well as Microsoft Research, Linden Labs, and Joi Ito Lab, the conference ran from October 17 to 20th at SFU’s downtown campus.

Over 300 delegates from 29 countries participated, and over 240 papers were presented in up to 9 parallel sessions on the 3 main conference days (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday). Keynote speakers included John Lester (LindenLabs, Boston), Henry Jenkins (MIT) and John Willinsky (Stanford).

Read the summary on the School of Communication's blog here>>

Delicious, flickr... searches all apply. There's lots.
As Borat would say, "Great SUCCESS!"

Internet Researchers descend on Vancouver for AOIR 8.0 Let's Play

Here at SFU Vancouver, we are proud to host the Association of Internet Researchers annual conference starting TOMORROW October 17, and going until the 20th. As part of the ground committee (organized by fearless Conference Chair Richard Smith) I can say that we've got a great event lined up and we're looking forward to welcoming y'all to share ideas with leading movers and shakers in the field. Just take a look at the awesome lineup of keynote speakers: Henry Jenkins (MIT), John Lester aka Pathfinder Linden (Linden Lab), and John Willinsky (UBC).

The conference website with information on the program, abstracts, and presenters is here. Too numerous and high quality to name them all here, so you'll just have to see for yourself.

The wiki of goings ons is here. What would we do without them.

There is, of course, a Facebook group -- just search under AoIR... and pie...

The abstract of my presentation on the Korean online games industry with Dal Yong Jin is here. Please do come. It's going to be a smashing panel with Lisa Nakamura (UIUC), Dan Burk (UMinnesota Law School), Sal Humphreys (Queensland UT), and Sara Grimes(SFU). It's on Friday, October 19th in theatre HC 1900 at Harbour Centre, 1:30.

Let's Play. Come and say hi. I'll be making sure there's still cream for coffee and the like.

North and South Korea sign pact

From CBC World News: Clasping each other's hands and then raising a toast on Thursday, the leaders of the two Koreas celebrated the signing of a historic reconciliation pact to end a decades-long Cold War standoff between their countries.

North Korean President Kim Jong-il and his South Korean counterpart Roh Moo-hyun agreed Thursday to replace a 1953 armistice with a new permanent peace treaty.

Under the previous ceasefire agreement, struck 54 years ago, North and South Korea were technically engaged in war until now. Thursday's pledge commits the leaders of both countries to push for a final peace settlement.

Read the whole thing>>