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The panel Wii the People: Can Games Be a Useful Tool to Engage the Public in Policy Development? will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 21st, in Hemisphere A.

Contents 1 Description 2 Speakers 3 Video 4 Notes and resources 4.1 From Nathon 4.2 General/from discussion 5 Discussion 6 Panel feedback

Description

Nothing engages people like games - even in these serious economic times they continue to reach broader and broader audiences, just think of Grandma playing the wii over the holidays. The average game player is around 35 and is as often a female as a male. One of the most active areas of social networks is games. Yet nothing matters like policy. Serious Games are now a well-known phenomenon, using technology to train and connect people in fields like intelligence, the military, business and health. Despite the democratization of media being enabled by the Internet, forums still primarily attract policy wonks and can be too cluttered to be useful. Could games make policy development fun for non-wonks? Could games help us attract new participants to this important dialogue and provide the means for sorting through the results? Could play help us see solutions we've missed or gather data from simulated situations? If so, what are some examples of experiments from the past and what might future games look like and how might they work?

Speakers

• Nathon Gunn - Fellow for the Study of Democracy at Queen's University, previously the head of Internet strategy for former Prime Minister of Canada Paul Martin, co-founding Director of the Board for Serious Games Canada, co-founder of Miramax New Media, co-creator of the History Canada Game, other credits include award-winning games played over 150-million times for folks like Disney and Family Channel. Currently preparing to launch “Social Game Universe” a tool to let people play social games with one another over various devices.

Video

Video from recorded panels will be posted here after the conference.

We still need a volunteer to record this panel. (Set up a tripod; hit "record" - panelists, you can do this, too!) Email Lynn Stinson to volunteer. (Other panels needing volunteers to record video.)

In the meantime, here's video from last year's conference:

Notes and resources

Panelists: Post any link or notes you'd like the audience to have before, during or after your panel.

Audience members: Know any related/relevant points/links? Post them under the "general" section.

From Nathon

• Example link - This is an example link. Go ahead and delete/replace it. In the rich editor, create a link by highlighting text and then clicking the world icon above. Don't forget the "http:".
  

General/from discussion

• Example link - This is an example link. Go ahead and delete/replace it. In the rich editor, create a link by highlighting text and then clicking the world icon above. Don't forget the "http:".
  

Discussion

Panel feedback

An audience survey will be in place by Monday to collect instant feedback.