Director of Comparative Media Studies Program and Full Professor of Literature at MIT (and subject of a past interview here at GSW!) Henry Jenkins has announced on his blog MIT’s The Futures of Entertainment conference. The free event will be held at MIT on the 17th and 18th of November, and “is designed to bring together leading thinkers from across the entertainment industry to speak about core issues around media convergence, transmedia storytelling, user-generated content, and participatory culture”.

According to Henry, “speakers confirmed so far include The Long Tail's Chris Anderson, Flickr's Caterina Fake, DC Comic's Paul Levitz, Warner Brother's Diane Nelson, Big Spaceship's Michael Lebowitz, social networking researcher danah boyd, television scholar Jason Mittell, and many others, including representatives from MTV, Cartoon Network, Bioware, and other leading companies in this space.”

Of special interest to GSW readers should be the Not the Real World Anymore panel, which discusses virtual spaces as “platforms for thought experiments” and as new places for “considering questions of community and connectivity”.

Sounds like an interesting couple of days, so register early, as they say, to avoid disappointment!

[edited by alistairw]