James Bridle

Who is he, and what does he do? James Bridle does things with books, booze and technology. He can be found at shorttermmemoryloss.com.

What’s he going to be banging on about? Oulipo and Other Experiments: on the affordances, constraints and playful possibilities of literature.

Robin Burkinshaw

Never heard of him. Fill me in. Robin used to be a playworker caring for children with autism, but is now a student of game development at Anglia Ruskin University. He tries to make games, but has so far gotten more recognition for playing them, which is alright. He’s not complaining.
His games prototypes, design thoughts and gaming diaries are mostly found at www.roburky.co.uk, but he’s more known for Alice and Kev, his experiment in homelessness in The Sims 3, found at aliceandkev.wordpress.com.

What’s he talking about? Robin will be talking about the things he does (see above), and will be answering questions by one of the people who are currently queuing up to pick his formidable brain.

Rex ‘Box’ Crowle

Who does this guy think he is? Rex says he does drawings and makes them wibble around a bit. In other words he creates visual and conceptual design for games, broadcast and interactive projects. Recently he’s been creating the visual playfulness of LittleBigPlanet, which has picked up a few awards here and there. And even more recently he drew all over of this website pretending he was doing “branding” for 2009’s event, which you can see up there in the banner, before we have to scrub it off.

Fair enough. What’ll he be rattling through at Playful though? Avatars and more general customisation, and how it allows players to feel relaxed about creating and expressing because they are using “pre-approved” art – so they can’t get it “wrong”. Not sure what I’m actually going to say, but I’m thinking of doing something with doodles, audience-participation and an old-school OHP

Russell Davies

Who’s this guy? Russell was born in Derby, enjoyed an uneventful childhood, did college, all that. After failing as a popstar and a joke writer he ended up in advertising and tried to do ‘interactive marketing’ way before anyone was interested. Ended up at Wieden + Kennedy working on clients like Microsoft, Nike and Honda. Then he went to work for Nike as Global Consumer Planning Director. He went freelance in 2006 and works with shadowy organisations like the Open Intelligence Agency and the Really Interesting Group. He also writes eggbaconchipsandbeans, occasionally organises ‘Interesting’ conferences, plays with things like speechification, dawdlr and slowpoke and does columns for Campaign magazine and Wired UK.

If asked what he actually does all day, he’ll normally mutter something about ‘post-digital’.

Yeah, but what’s he doing at Playful? He has no idea. He’ll have to think about that.

Alfie Dennen & Paula Le Dieu

Who are these folks? Alfie has been doing onliney mobiley and web bits since about 2000. He co-founded Moblog in 2003 after a disastrous first start-up catering to the Palm OS and then in 2005 made ‘We’re Not Afraid‘, a 7/7 protest site that captured the public spirit in London (a bit like http://sorryeverybody.com). He’s been playing with art and maps lately, first Moblog made The Big Art Mob (For Channel 4) which documents all the public art in Britain, then he started playing with collaborative drawing/game playing on maps with ‘What Is The Question‘ and Britglyph which won a Webby last year for, it seems, being completely bonkers.

Paula Le Dieu is a luvvy geek with a background in technology, media and theatre. Currently Director of Digital at the BFI, Paula has been involved in facilitating creative communities since 2003 when she started working on the Creative Archive at the BBC. Since then she has designed and championed tools and platforms that allow all of us to participate in our societies and have a voice in our culture. Despite all the technology she has at her fingertips her preferred medium of expression is face to face over a hot chocolate in a local cafe.

What are they doing on a bus stop top? Their new project Bus-tops, and will create a london-wide networked canvas of LED displays on the roof’s of bus shelters that anyone can create art and games for. Bus-Tops was the winning entrant in the London arc of the Artists Taking The Lead fund, an Arts Council and London Olympics public art project.

Kareem Ettouney

Who’s this cheeky chappy? It’s Kareem Ettouney, Art Director at Media Molecule. Egyptian by birth, Kareem’s work displays exotic cultural influences which make it truly distinctive. The breadth and scope of Kareem’s work reflects his diverse background in interior, graphic, theatre and film set design. Kareem’s eclectic creativity found its home when he joined Lionhead Studios in 2002, where he quickly established himself as the lead concept artist. Whilst at Lionhead, he became firm friends with Mark Healey and Alex Evans and worked with them on the cult hit Rag Doll Kung Fu. When Mark and Alex left Lionhead in 2006 to form Media Molecule, Kareem was their first and natural choice to join them as co-founder, along with David Smith. Kareem has been absolutely instrumental in the iconic look of Media Molecule’s first project Little Big Planet and is currently working on his first book to be published later this year.

Fair do! What will he be talking about? We’re not sure, but if he talked about all of the above we’d be stoked. Stay tuned.

Nicholas ‘Feltron’ Felton

He looks tough as nails. Who is he? Nicholas Felton spends much of his time thinking about data, charts and our daily routines. He is the author of several personal annual reports that collate countless measurements into a rich collection of graphs and maps reflecting the year’s activities. He is the co-founder of Daytum.com, a site for counting and communicating daily data, and regular designer of information graphics for numerous publications. His work has been profiled in publications including the Wall Street Journal, Wired and Creative Review.

That’s all very well and good, but what’s he going to fill 20mins with? He plans on giving a demonstration of some of his favorite hoops and hurdles he’s jumped through to determine some of the more exciting numbers in his annual reports… a bit of a how-to, and a look at some of the process and challenges of his work.

Duncan Gough

Not another guy with a beard? Yep, but this one is a reformed casual games developer who got tired of cloning, made a passive game and is now excited about fictive games.

And what wisdom will he bestow on us all? Duncan’s talks is entitled ‘Let’s play a game of Kes!’ – A look at how tv drama introduced children to storytelling and how games might seek to emulate that approach.

Leila Johnston

Tell me about her… Leila Johnston (’Armando Iannucci in a dress’ – David Schneider, ‘Very fit’ – Dominik Diamond) is a comedy writer and editor of books, magazines, radio things and websites. Her new book is a funny fantasy gamebook for adults called Enemy of Chaos. Her last book ‘How to Worry Friends and Inconvenience People’ was based on her hit website worryfriends.com. She lives in Elstree to be near the Big Brother house.

…and her talk? Leila will be recounting her experience of creating Enemy of Chaos, a postmodern choose-your-own-adventure novel with an accompanying iPhone app, and explaining why you must never, ever, do it the way she did. She hopes you enjoy the RPG reminiscence, jokes and flowcharts and that none of this ever gets back to Ian Livingstone.

Katy Lindemann

Who dis den? Katy Lindemann will be speaking about why robots are full of win, and why playful design & thinking are generally a Very Good Thing (and for different reasons than you might expect). She’s a planner at Naked Communications, but is “still working on forming the new A-Team….”

Chris O’Shea

Who? Chris O’Shea sits somewhere between artist and designer, creating experiences that playfully challenge our perception of spaces and objects.

What? He will talk about creating installations full of charm, joy & wonder, including police lights, chickens, giant hands, air guitar, xray torches, spinning mirrors and music boxes.

Simon Oliver

I recognise this guy… Simon is the founder of indie games studio HandCircus, creators of the Rolando series for the iPhone. Before founding HandCircus, Simon spent nine years creating playful experiences, from exhibits at the Science Museum and installations for festivals to learning interfaces for children and online multi-user games.

Nice. What’s on his mind? Simon will be talking about special opportunities and hazards of indie games development, giving examples from the development of both Rolando games

Molly Ränge

Who’s this Swedish lady? Before getting all serious Molly spent a couple of years in music production mainly as a club promoter, Dj and live event producer in the southern parts of Sweden. Then suddenly one early autumn she got a phone call from Stockholm and has since then been working as project manager at different communication & experience design agencies in Stockholm. With a love for structure, storytelling and game she is into setting the frames for others to grow, learn and develop in, may it be students, politicians or CEO’s. And when not at work? “I dance a lot, lie a lot, love a lot. I try to stay humble no matter what & to look at my first wrinkles as a sign of chance to develop deep character.”

What’s Molly coming all the way to London to tell us about? It will be something about storytelling, pedagogy and creation of learning contexts in a post digital age. And since she can’t leave music behind, maybe something about jazz.

Roo Reynolds

It’s Roo Reynolds! Last year, Roo joined BBC Vision as their Portfolio Executive for Social Media which means he spends his time thinking about the intersection between television and social media. He plays a lot of games and reads a lot of books, but occasionally is able to focus on a problem for long enough to make something. Roo opened Playful ‘08 with a demonstration of his Rock Band MIDI guitar , an experience from which neither he nor London have quite recovered.

What’s he doing this year? How could he top the guitar thing? When we asked him, Roo hadnt finished writing his talk yet. He says it will be about games and films. Or games in films. Or films in games. Something like that anyway.

Daniel Soltis

Who dat? Daniel Soltis is an interaction designer at Tinker.it! and a graduate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. His work focuses on physical computing, large-scale interfaces, and playful interactions. He has presented on urban and hybrid games at South by Southwest, Come Out and Play, the Adelaide Film Festival, and the ACM SIGGRAPH Video Game Symposium.

And? Daniel will be talking about physical computing and hardware hacking in the context of urban and pervasive games.

Tassos Stevens

Tassos who? Tassos Stevens is a runner and director of Coney, an agency of adventure making live crossplatform play where the audience is cast into the leading role, finding the most exciting ways to make stories and play with each other. Coney is founded on principles of adventure, loveliness, reciprocity and total potential engagement, and is as it does: a playful community of makers and players that is a game of secret society across the world, playing with ideas both online and mano a mano. Coney has been commissioned by the likes of National Theatre, LIFT, the Science Museum, Dublin Fringe Festival, Metal, and publishers Hodder & Stoughton, and designed and run games for Come Out & Play and Hide & Seek. Currently at BAC – where Coney are supported artists – A Small Town Anywhere: theatre with no performers but a playing audience, taking roles as citizens in a community at war with itself in a piece inspired by Clouzot’s film Le Corbeau; players can co-create their experience through advance digital and real-world interaction, as well as on the night. Tassos himself conceived The Soho Project for the London Games Festival and is developing interactive projects with the BBC and C4, and a 4IP-comissioned game for the iPhone. He’s a theatre-maker, writer and game-designer with a doctorate in Psychology.

Impressive. Very impressive. What’s he got to say? Tassos’ll be talking about The Ashes.

Tim Wright

Okay, so this picture looks intriguing. Who’s the crazy guy? Tim Wright is a digital writer, a cross platform media producer and a director of XPT Ltd. His writing credits include two BAFTA-winning interactive projects: the comedy self help disk /’Mind Gym’/ and web & email drama /’Online Caroline’/. In 2004/5, he created the popular collaborative web fiction and Sony Award-nominated BBC Radio 4 play ‘/In Search of Oldton/’. Most recently he contributed to a radical rethink of /Radio 4 Today Programme/’s website and also developed and wrote the online component of the highly successful London-New York public art project /The Telectroscope/. When not walking in Scotland, he continues to develop his 30-year amateur mission to play golf on the moon (with David Bowie).

Kidmapped? Yep: KIDMAPPED! or what happens when you take a book for a walk…

From 29th June-24th August 2009, Tim Wright followed a route across Scotland as described in Chapters 14-27 of RL Stevenson’s classic adventure novel ‘Kidnapped’. He mapped, blogged, published, performed and played his way along the trail, reading out extracts from the book, documenting his experiences in as many ways as possible, and discussing both the story and the landscape with people both on the web and face-to-face.

He’s now playing with the idea a series of ‘bookmapping’ projects that might combine outdoor adventuring & documentary, mapped media, online & offline audience participation, personalised printing – and the shared reading of some really great books. If you’d like to play around with this idea too, come to the Playful session – /The Travails of the Kidmapper can be found here [or Google 'kidmapper'].