http://www.hhill.org/blog en 2009-06-17T02:30:00-07:00 http://hhill.org/hill/presentations_next/ Featuring  Conference Website: http://mobile.hhill.org The Hollywood Hill 2008-07-24T17:30:00-07:00 http://hhill.org/hill/presentations_next/ Featuring Moderated by Journalist Andrew Gumbel (LA Times, UK Guardian). Panel includes Paul Audley, President, FilmLA; Glenn S. Gainor, Head of Physical Production, Screen Gems Inspired by the article "Hollywood Feels The Pinch: Film Production at Standstill" written by Andrew Gumbel for the UK Guardian on 4/27/09, this June 16th event will discuss current L.A. film production trends, and how tax credits and incentives are needed to bring more production back to Los Angeles. Andrew's recent article details the exceedingly low amount of L.A.-based productions this year compared with the past decade. Andrew will moderate a panel including Paul Audley, FilmLA President and Glenn Gainor, Head of Physical Production, Screen Gems. The Hollywood Hill 2009-06-17T02:30:00-07:00 http://hhill.org/hill/presentations_next/ Featuring Josh Ruxin, Founder and Director of Rwanda Works and The Access Project and Millennium Village Rwanda; Assistant Clinical Professor of Public Health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University Fifteen years after the genocide, Rwanda has embraced economic development and is quickly becoming a modern state. Under a presidential-led initiative, the country is building up a global network of powerful friends at U.S. companies such as Google, Starbucks, and Costco. In the middle of all of this, Josh Ruxin's Rwanda Works, is working outside Kigali with an innovative model to advance entrepreneurship and the private sector. Join us for this exciting discussion with the founder of Rwanda Works and download the article featuring him in this month's issue of Fast Company magazine. The Hollywood Hill 2009-04-22T02:30:01-07:00 http://hhill.org/hill/presentations_next/ Featuring Mike Medavoy, Chairman/CEO of Phoenix Pictures and a guest panel. We are delighted to host this powerful discussion on the role of media and the entertainment industry in U.S. foreign policy. Mike Medavoy's new book "American Idol After Iraq: Competing for Hearts and Minds in the Global Media Age" is gathering acclaim from a wide variety of circles, from former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, to film director Martin Scorsese. Mike will discuss the topics of the book with an internationally-renowned panel of experts. The Hollywood Hill 2009-07-23T23:21:00-07:00 http://hhill.org/hill/presentations_next/ Featuring Ian Bogost, Suzanne Seggerman, Benjamin Stokes Our next event is on a new segment of the video game industry known as "Games For Change". Video Games are going to play a major part in many aspects of our society: how future generations of children are educated, how the military conducts its training, how cities are built, how municipal budgets are balanced, how social patterns are manipulated, how people interact, and how knowledge is attained. A new community of game designers have recently formed with the mission of creating video games that enable social change. The potential of these games is huge. For instance, massive multiplayer games, known as MMORPGs, in which players sign-on around the world into a web-based system and play against each other, have the potential to unite individuals across borders and engage them in common causes. Real-World Examples: A state senator from Massachusetts worked with graduate students to create a game called MassBalance (http://www.playmassbalance.com), and challenged people to balance the state’s budget online. The United Nations World Food Program recently launched Food Force (http://www.food-force.com), a game with over 3 million players worldwide who work to save and rebuild the fictional island of Sheylan, ravished by drought and war. A number of people – or their virtual selves -- come together in an online, multiplayer game called Second Life (http://secondlife.com) to help design a park for Queens, New York. The interactive nature of games, their ability to present complex and dynamic information, and, increasingly, to allow thousands of people to meet in sophisticated virtual environments means games can accomplish what TV never could in terms of addressing educational and social challenges. We have begun working with this community to develop new games that fit The Hollywood Hill's goals. This event will be an introduction to this new community, the possibilities we have for developing high-impact games, and a sampling of some of the games that have already been developed and deployed. The speakers will include three of the pioneers of this new field: Ian Bogost of Persuasive Games, and Suzanne Seggerman & Benjamin Stokes of Games4Change, one of the main organizations nurturing this new community of game developers. Ian has worked on numerous games including online activism games for the Dean Campaign and the DCCC. Benjamin has worked for the United Nations managing their online volunteering service and was the E-learning architect at NetAid. Suzanne is a Director at NYC-based think tank Web Lab, and was a producer for PBS, including on the Ken Burns series "The West". Ian Bogost is one of the world's top experts and game designers in this area. He is an academic videogame researcher, game designer, and educational publisher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Founder of Persuasive Games, a game studio that designs, builds, and distributes electronic games for persuasion, instruction, and activism. He designed the online activism games for the DCCC and the Howard Dean campaign in the last presidential election. Ian also participated in last year's Games For Change Conference in New York and Serious Games Summit in Washington, D.C. Benjamin Stokes is Co-founder and Co-director of Games for Change (G4C), the national umbrella organization supporting and advancing social change through digital games. Previously, Benjamin was the E-Learning Architect at NetAid, where he trained high school students to reach 150,000 of their peers in the fight on global poverty. Benjamin has also managed the United Nations online volunteering service. Before NetAid, Benjamin produced research tools and virtual fieldtrips for the more than 43,000 high schools served by Bigchalk/ProQuest publishers. At the CREA House, Benjamin helped develop a living wage standard for the U.S.-Mexico border region. Benjamin has studied abroad in Senegal; at Haverford College he co-founded the anti-sweatshop student alliance. Suzanne Seggerman is Co-founder and Co-director of Games for Change (G4C), a part of the Serious Games Initiative. G4C provides support, visibility and shared resources to organizations and individuals using digital games for positive social change, with special assistance to non-profits and foundations entering the field. She is also a Director at NYC-based think tank Web Lab, whose mission is to develop innovative new media and cross-media projects that bring fresh perspectives and new voices to the discussion of public issues. At Web Lab she works on a variety of projects, including the Crossover Project and the Loop, a television show in development. Her background in online media includes community-oriented interactive environments and the design of non-traditional games. Some of this work earned her awards from New Voices New Visions and Communications Arts. Before working in new media, she was a documentary film producer for PBS, including on the Ken Burns' series "The West" and as Co-producer of "Race For Life," a humanitarian aid and documentary film about the effects of the environment on perinatal care in Eastern Europe. She is a nationally-ranked scabble player and the queen of asteroids. The Hollywood Hill 2006-05-09T17:53:00-07:00