I just returned from the Future of Entertainment Conference. I went with the lovely and brilliant Amber Case and it was awesome.

I frankly cannot do the entire trip justice. So I will show some photos and post some links and welcome lots of people asking me questions. I am sure Amber Case will do a fantastic job of describing in detail all of the panel discussions.

Also there is a great resource http://convergenceculture.org/weblog/. Xiaochang Li organized and coordinated and also herself(?) did an awful lot of live blogging during the whole event.

This here is just a snippet from the conversation featured from Session 7 – Global Flows, Global Deals
http://www.convergenceculture.org/weblog/2008/11/foe3_liveblog_session_7_-_glob.php#more

# BC: Is ad-supported media/gaming a workable business model across cultures? If not, why not?
(Back-channel questions FTW!)

* BF: Most communities in North America will support ads, but it depends on the ads. Sometimes you can pay to get rid of the ads.
* MM: I think that’s going back to broadcast–that’s not any different from having P&G ads during commercial breaks in soap operas. We have to think differently; we have to think about brand utility. We need to figure out how our brands can become more useful. The consumers don’t want billboards anymore. We fight every day with clients, telling them we’re not going to do that because we have to do better. We are developing a project for short films (finding talents), where the characters don’t even necessarily have to use Axe, for Axe.
* BF: We see value and the advertisers see a lot of value. Advertisers are seeing their markets disappearing. Girls&boys don’t watch as much TV as they used to.
* NB: There’s also now more legislation about how much advertisement can appear and where.

There were so many good questions!
Also! There is a whole list of podcasts from this and previous conferences here:
FOE3 Podcasts