Virtual Worlds III has Craig Reynolds and Ken Perlin lined up for keynotes (two incredibly influential academics, Reynolds work on ‘boids has had a huge influence on agent based AI in games, and Perlin’s impact in graphics has been immense).

No keynotes announced yet for VS Games, but is supported by the EU FP7 GALA network of excellence, so will be guaranteed to bring along many of Europe’s top games and learning researchers.

Download here the whole Call for Papers as PDF.

Submission Types

• Full Technical Papers (10-14 pages)
• Short Technical Papers (4-8 pages)
• Poster Papers (max. 4 pages)
• Demonstrations / Interactive Installations (max. 4 pages)
• Industry Full/Short Papers, Posters, Demonstrations (same page restrictions as above)
• Tutorial / Workshop submissions (max. 4 pages)
• Doctoral Consortium submissions (max. 4 pages)

Submissions must be in Springer LNCS format. All submissions will be reviewed by the conference’s international program committee. Accepted papers will be published as technical papers, poster papers, demo papers or extended abstracts. Authors might be asked by the program committee to resubmit their paper in a different category. Extended versions of selected papers will be invited for a special issue of the “Entertainment Computing” journal.

Important Dates

March 10^th, 2012 Workshop proposal submission
April 1^st, 2012 Full/short paper submission
May 20^th, 2012 Notification for full/short papers
May 30^th, 2012 Poster/demo/installation/doctoral consortium submission
June 15^th, 2012 Notification for posters/demos/installations/doctoral consortium
June 22^nd, 2012 Camera ready submission (all submission types)
Sep. 26^th to 29^th, 2012 Conference: University Bremen, Germany

Topics

We invite authors to submit original papers, posters or demos in all areas of Entertainment Computing including (but not limited to):

Technologies for Entertainment Computing

• Computer Graphics
• Digital Audio
• Human Machine Interfaces
• Artificial Intelligence
• Integrated Development
• Computer, Video, Console and Internet Games

Design and Creative Environment

• Game Design
• Interactive Sound
• Graphic Design
• Art and Novel Media
• New Genres of Entertainment Technology

Advanced Applications and Platforms

• Augmented, Virtual or Mixed Reality
• Ubiquitous / Pervasive Entertainment
• Entertainment and Ambiant Intelligence
• Robots and Cyberpets
• Mobile Entertainment
• Self-Reflecting Entertainment Computing

Application Domains of Entertainment Computing

• Games / Serious Games
• Interactive TV and Cinema
• Edutainment
• Authoring and Communication
• Healthcare
• Simulation
• Digital Entertainment and Sports
• Digital Entertainment and Pleasure
• Games for Special Audiences / User Groups (elderly, childern, people with mental or physical disabilities)
• Human Computation Games

Theory

• Impact of Entertainment Technology on Users and Society
• TransMedia, Art and Entertainment
• Methodologies, Paradigms, Tools for Entertainment Applications
• Narratives / Digital Storytelling
• Social Impact, Social Networking, Sound and Music

Technical Papers

Technical papers are the main medium for presenting new research results to the community at ICEC. Submissions should describe novel unpublished work relating to one or more of the topics listed above.

Papers must be submitted in the Springer LNCS format (see below). Papers must be written in English. As to account for the expected variety in submissions to this multidisciplinary conference, paper lengths may vary within a certain limit. Short paper submissions have to be between 4 and 8 pages in length. Full paper submissions have to be between 10 and 14 pages in length. In any case, reviewers will be instructed to judge the contribution of a paper relative to its length. Typical contributions presenting significant research advances/results should be around 12 pages in length (Full Technical Papers). Contributions presenting more focused approaches/results should be around 6 pages in length (Short Technical Papers). Papers with exceeding length relative to their contribution will be rejected. All papers will be reviewed by the ICEC 2012 program committee. Accepted papers will be divided into two categories, long presentations and short presentations. The committee may accept papers conditionally or for a different category. Authors may be asked to either shorten or lengthen their paper accordingly. Authors may also include a video (optional) in their submission. Video files should be at most 50MB in size. See the general submission information for more details about preparing your submission.

Posters

Posters provide an interactive forum in which authors can present work to conference attendees during special poster sessions. Posters provide an opportunity to describe new work or work that is still in progress and will be more lightly reviewed than papers. A poster submission should be in the form of a four-page paper in Springer LNCS format, describing the research problem, contribution, and value to ICEC attendees, submitted as a PDF file. Authors may also include a video (optional). Video files should be at most 50MB in size. See the general submission information for more details about preparing your submission. Posters will be displayed on cork boards during specific sessions. We expect to be able to accommodate posters of up to 3 feet by 4 feet (portrait format), so we suggest using that size or smaller. Additional details concerning the poster format will be made available following author notification.

Demonstrations and Interactive Installations

Peer-reviewed demonstrations show early implementations of novel, interesting, and important entertainment computing concepts or systems, or can serve to showcase commercial products not previously described in the research literature. At the ICEC, demonstrations also encompass interactive works of art or installations of interest to the entertainment computing community. Demonstrations should be brief, so that they can be shown repeatedly. We particularly encourage demonstrations with which attendees can interact. A demonstration or installation submission consists of: 1) an extended abstract that should be no more than four Springer-format pages in length, 2) an accompanying video which should be at most 50MB in size, and 3) a supplement document with a list of a) technical requirements including electrical and connectivity needs and b) space requirements including display and footprint needs. By default, demos will have a table, chairs and internet connection available. By their nature, interactive installations are intended for larger, potentially public spaces. We will try to accommodate for the needs of these types of installations, but please include a minimal set-up so that we know the range of requirements that we will need to meet. Successful demonstration/installation submissions will be contacted by the chair to confirm the availability of the requested resources. The abstract, digital video and requirements supplement must be submitted electronically.

Industry Papers / Posters / Demonstrations

Industry papers, posters, and demonstrations are intended to increase the knowledge transfer between academia and industry in entertainment computing. While regular contributions are mainly reviewed for their scientific novelty and contribution, industry papers should focus more on practical solutions and results that are of immediate interest to the industry or especially facilitate communication between industry and academia. Possible examples are (but are not limited to):

• Novel and interesting applications (both commercial and non-profit)
• New frameworks, tools, or libraries
• Business models (especially for serious games)
• Development best practices
• Novel input devices

Industry contributions should follow the same guidelines as regular contributions in terms of layout, pages, additional material etc. (see above). We specifically invite industry members to consider submitting a poster or demo to present live working systems.
If you work in the industry and would like to make a submission, but you are not used to working with scientific paper templates and publication procedures, please do not hesitate to contact us for assistance.

Tutorials / Workshops

We invite proposals for workshops that will be held in conjunction with ICEC 2012. We invite proposals in all areas of entertainment computing (see conference topics listed above) and particularly welcome proposals that will focus on and promote discussion on new and emerging trends. Workshop proposals are restricted to four pages in length (in the Springer LNCS format) and must include the following information:

• Contact information (name, affiliation, address, phone number/fax, and email) of the workshop organizer(s)
• Relevant CV information of the workshop leader(s)
• Workshop title
• Workshop objective
• Background/relevance of workshop topic
• Expected workshop outcomes (publications, activates, “take-home” skills development, etc.)
• Names of potential workshop participants and expected number of participants
• Workshop due dates (schedule of submission and review of submitted material for your workshop)

Workshops can be scheduled for either half a day or a full day (please indicate your choice). Please submit your workshop proposal via the electronic conference system.

Doctoral Consortium

The ICEC 2012 Doctoral Consortium provides an opportunity for doctoral students to explore and develop their research interests in an interdisciplinary workshop, under the guidance of a panel of distinguished researchers. We invite students who feel they would benefit from this kind of feedback on their dissertation work to apply for this unique opportunity to share their work with students in a similar situation as well as senior researchers in the field. The strongest candidates will be those who have a clear idea and an area, and have made some progress, but who are not so far along that they can no longer make changes. Also, as well as stating how you will gain from acceptance, both you and your advisor should be clear on what you can contribute to the Doctoral Consortium.
The Consortium has the following objectives:

• Provide a supportive setting for feedback on students’ current research and guidance on future research directions
• Offer each student comments and fresh perspectives on their work from researchers and students outside their own institution
• Promote the development of a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research
• Contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers and conference events

Current graduate students pursuing a PhD project who would benefit from detailed workshop discussions of their doctoral research should submit a single PDF file consisting of:

1. A 4-page extended abstract of your thesis work in Springer LNCSformat. Clearly specifying:

• Originality of the work with respect to current concepts and techniques
• Importance of the work with respect to fundamental issues and themes in entertainment computing
• Results to date and their validity
• Contribution of the work (expected and/or achieved) to entertainment computing

2. Your CV
3. A one-paragraph statement of expected benefits of participation for both yourself and the other consortium participants (i.e., what will you contribute as well as gain).

Submission Guidelines

Papers and abstracts should be submitted through the submission web site in PDF format. All materials will be reviewed and processed electronically. The information about the work and a contact author’s email address, mailing address, and phone number must be submitted through the submission website by the deadline (see above). Submissions should not be anonymized for review. Movies or other materials can also be submitted through the submission web site. The movies must not exceed 50 megabytes in size. Any additional materials must also be received by the deadline. All submissions will be reviewed by the ICEC 2012 program committee.

http://www.virtual-worlds.net/vw2012/

Dear colleagues,

We are delighted to announce and call for papers for the Third International Conference on Virtual Worlds (VW’2012) which will be held from July 3 to 5, 2012 in Paris (La Défense).

Background

A Virtual World can be defined as a computer-simulated environment with its own physical and biological laws, populated by dynamic interacting entities such as artificial creatures and human avatars. Whereas Virtual Reality largely focuses on the design of 3D immersive spaces, and Artificial Life on the modeling and study of life-like systems, Virtual Worlds embrace both dimensions by synthesizing an entire digital universe. Their design and realization requires competency in various fields from Virtual Reality and Physics to Artificial Life and Ecology, Computer Graphics, High Performance Computing, and more.

Virtual Worlds have many applications in 3D simulation, computer games and online business. However, the approach is still broader and more fundamental. It also addresses the crucial problem of elucidating the constitutive principles by which large numbers of interacting elements can self-organize and produce emergent phenomena as they are observed in the natural world. Therefore the study of Virtual Worlds is particularly concerned with the formal basis of synthetic universes and offers a promising new way to contribute to the understanding of Nature and of complex systems in general.

Subjects

Topics of interest for the conference include, but are not limited to:

Virtual World applications

-           Video games and entertainment

-           Educational, medical and business solutions

-           Virtual economies

-           Social and philosophical implications

-           Virtual Worlds and Ecology

Virtual World technologies

-           High performance and low latency solutions

Virtual and Augmented Reality

-           “Avatarization”

-           Human-machine interfaces

Virtual World fundamentals

-           Artificial physics and chemistries

-           Complex systems, emergence, self-organization

Artificial Life

-           Artificial life and ecosystems

-           Evolution, co-evolution and adaptation

-           Collective intelligence, cooperation, communication

Artificial creatures

-           Avatars

-           Virtual creatures

-           Intelligent agents

-           Conversational agents

Submissions

The Program Committee of VW’2012 is looking forward to high quality papers on substantial, original, and unpublished research.

Full papers may be submitted electronically from 16 October 2011 to 16 January 2012 via the conference website.

All submitted work will be assigned for double blind peer review. Authors of accepted papers will be asked to register to the conference and present their work.

Papers must be submitted in LNCS format and be up to 10 pages in length including abstract, figures and references. Formatting instructions are available at :  http://www.springer.com/lncs

Short papers (4 pages including abstract, figures and references) can also be submitted and selected ones will be presented as posters during demos session.

Artistic and technical demos are also welcome and can be submitted by contacting alainlioret@gmail.com before 12 December 2011.

Final demos has to be set up before 05 May 2012.

Important Dates

Paper submission deadline:               16 January 2012

Notification of acceptance :                05 March 2012

Early registration before :                   15 March 2012

Final paper deadline:                          05 April 2012

Conference days :                              03 July to 05 July 2012

Demos and Posters

Short Paper submission deadline:     16 January 2012

Notification of acceptance :                05 March 2012

Early registration before :                   15 March 2012

Final poster and demo deadline:        05 April 2012

We look forward to welcoming you at the conference!

Steering Committee

- Alain Lioret,  Université Paris 8 (Chairman)

Contact : alainlioret@gmail.com

- Jean-Claude Heudin , Institut International du Multimédia (Co-chairman)

Contact : jean-claude.heudin@devinci.fr

- Stefan Bornhofen, EISTI (Co-chairman)

Contact : sb@eisti.fr

- Jean-Claude Torrel, Institut International du Multimédia (Co-chairman)

Contact : jean-claude.torrel@devinci.fr

Provisional Program Committee

Bruce Damer, DigitalSpace, USA

Jeffrey Ventrella, CDM, Vancouver, Canada

Sébastien Barot, Bioemco,  France

Evelyne Lutton, INRIA, France

Emmanuel Cayla, ESTP, France

Kevin Korb, Monash, Australia

Marc Métivier, Univ. Paris Descartes, France

Tom Barbalet, BIOTA, USA

Frederic Fol Leymarie , University of London, GB

Pierre Berger, Paris ACM Siggraph, France

Penousal Machado, University of Coimbra, Portugal

Jon Mc Cormack, Monash, Australia

Maciej Komosinski, Poznan University, Poland

Mathew Lewis, Ohio State University, USA

Robyn Taylor, Alberta, Canada

Simon Richir, Ensam Angers, France

Marc Ebner, Univ. Tübingen, Germany

Gerald de Jong, Darwin @Home, USA

Joseph Nechvatal,  BIOTA, France

Alan Dorin, Monash, Australia

Daniel Thalmann, EPFL, Suisse

Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, Miralab, Suisse

Tatsuo Unemi, Tokyo, Japan

Leonel Moura, Portugal

Joseph Nechvatal, School of Visual Arts, USA

The important dates are:

• Paper submission: 30th September 2011
• Notification of acceptance: 14th October 2011
• Final paper submission: 28th October 2011
• Summit: 28th-29th November 2011

Topics of Interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Blended/Hybrid learning
• Personalised learning
• Intelligent agents in learning
• Edutainment & Game-Based Learning
• Location-based and contextual learning
• Immersive Educational technology markets & challenges
• Virtual and mixed-reality for education
• Educational software/hardware
• Intelligent classroom
• Virtual laboratories and tools
• Pedagogy for the Internet Age
• Innovations in the teaching laboratory
• Student assessment in high-tech teaching environments
• Cultural dimensions of educational technology
• Educational technology innovations
• Social/Collaborative learning
• Smart educational environment
• Teaching strategies to maximise benefits of emerging technology
• Future research issues for Immersive Education

More details on the call for papers page.

Researching Learning in Immersive Virtual Environments 2011 (ReLIVE11)

Creative Solutions for New Futures, 21^st – 22^nd September 2011, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

Reduced Fee! New Deadline!

In response to feedback from the enthusiastic but underfunded community, we have worked to reduce the conference fee, enabling more opportunities for attendance in a period when budgets for conferences are constrained. Although we are no longer providing a formal conference dinner and entertainment, we anticipate that this will provide more focus for academic collaboration and networking. This has enabled us to reduce the fee to £285 for early birds and £340 for later registrations. Consequently we are offering a new deadline for abstract submissions, and will be accepting these up to and including the 3rd of July.

We are pleased to remind you that there will be Best Paper awards at the conference, to the value of £300 in Springer books, sponsored by Springer. Publication opportunities include an ISBN registered conference proceedings (note that the ReLIVE08 Conference Proceedings are still regularly downloaded from the archive conference site), and an edited book of chapters developed from the top paper submissions, published in the new Springer Immersive Environments series (to be launched at the conference).

As a delegate to ReLIVE11 you will meet with other leading edge researchers from around the world to exchange ideas and scholarship. With an opening keynote from Robin Wight, founder of The Ideas Foundation and a creative legend in advertising, we challenge the community to think creatively and to look for opportunities to collaborate and innovate. The invited panel speakers from within and without academia bring a range of interesting perspectives and expertise to our discussions and we anticipate a showcase of papers and workshops that reflect the best of current academic research, making ReLIVE11 your one stop conference this year for disseminating, sharing and stimulating your practice in virtual worlds.

We are now seeking proposals for papers, workshops, symposia, posters and inworld events that demonstrate innovation within the themes of Concepts, Methods, and Implementations (In collaboration with JISC CETIS).

ReLIVE Virtual Festival, 20^th September 2011 We are also pleased to offer a ReLIVE Virtual Festival. This will take place within Second Life and/or other immersive environments, and we invite innovative proposals for activities (see ‘Call for Papers’ section on the ReLIVE11 website for more details), particularly from and for those who would otherwise be unable to attend the conference. Registration for this one-day event will be free, but places are limited.

The Virtual World Conference, 14^th September 2011 ReLIVE11 is linked to The Virtual World Conference, a 24 hour conference of invited speakers taking place within Second Life on the 14th of September. Please see www.thevirtualworldconference.org for more details.

Please visit our website for full details www.open.ac.uk/relive11

Best wishes

ReLIVE11 Conference Team

From email:

MOOTUK11 ticket prices announced

We finally managed to tie down the costs and work out the ticket prices for this year’s UK Moot. Full details about the updated price list and ticket options can be found in our latest blog post entitled ‘MOOTUK11: Ticket options and prices’.

Early Bird Tickets will be available from our online store from 11am on Monday, 17 January 2010. Please be advised that payment by credit or debit card is required to complete the booking and secure your place. If you have question about the booking process or experience problems on the day please email us at booking@ulcc.ac.uk to ensure your query is received and acted upon

Call for papers
Last but by no means least, we wanted to inform you that the call for papers for MOOTUK11 is now open and submissions are accepted. Full details on ‘how to submit your proposal’ can be found on our conference website. We encourage proposals from all backgrounds to showcase Moodle’s strength and diversity.

Best wishes
The MoodleMoot UK Team

Over the last ten years, the way in which education and training is delivered has changed considerably with the advent of new technologies. One such new technology that holds considerable promise for helping to engage learners is Games-Based Learning (GBL). The Conference offers an opportunity for scholars and practitioners interested in the issues related to GBL to share their thinking and research findings. Papers can cover various issues and aspects of GBL in education and training: technology and implementation issues associated with the development of GBL; use of mobile and MMOGs for learning; pedagogical issues associated with GBL; social and ethical issues in GBL; GBL best cases and practices, and other related aspects. We are particularly interested in empirical research that addresses whether GBL enhances learning. This Conference provides a forum for discussion, collaboration and intellectual exchange for all those interested in any of these fields of research or practice.

The conference committee welcomes both academic and practitioner papers on a wide range of topics using a range of scholarly approaches including theoretical and empirical papers employing qualitative, quantitative and critical methods.  Action research, case studies and work in progress/posters are welcomed approaches. PhD Research, proposals for roundtable discussions, non-academic contributions and product demonstrations based on the main themes are also invited.

You can find calls for papers for these tracks at:

http://academic-conferences.org/ecgbl/ecgbl2011/ecgbl11-call-papers.htm

Conference proceedings are submitted for accreditation on publication. Please note that depending on the accreditation body this process can take up to several months.

Papers accepted for the conference will be published in the conference proceedings, subject to author registration. Papers presented at the conference will also be considered for publication in a special issue of the Electronic Journal of e-Learning.

Papers presented at the conference will be published in the conference proceedings, subject to author registration and payment.

For the first time there will be a prize for the best PhD paper and the best Poster presented at the conference.

Please feel free to circulate this message to any colleagues or contacts you think may be interested.

Invitation to Submit:
We invite abstracts of between 500 and 650 words describing the proposed chapter. Abstracts should be supported further by up to 500 words explaining the theoretical underpinning to the chapter, and a brief summary describing how this chapter will contribute to the book. If the work has been previously published in any format, or is under consideration elsewhere, please indicate details of this with your submission.

Submissions should be sent as a Word or RTF document attachment by email to virtualworlds@open.ac.uk, by 31 July 2010.
Authors will be notified of acceptance by 31 August 2010.
Final chapters, of between 8,000 and 10,000 words, will be due by 30 October 2010, before a double-blind review and revision period.
Completed manuscripts to be submitted on 15 December 2010.

Objectives:
We anticipate that this book will:
Explore how living, working and learning in virtual worlds is changing notions of who we are and how we mediate our identities;
Develop understanding and awareness about the diversity of identity issues in virtual worlds;
Contribute to the theory and development of good practice in identity management and research in virtual worlds;
Propose visions for future practice and research relating to identity management and research in virtual worlds;
Provide examples and case studies from key areas of professional practice.

Further details, including a more detailed guide to content, can be found at http://www.open.ac.uk/virtualworlds/p2_1.shtml

Guest editors: Carlos Delgado Kloos and Daniel J. Livingstone

Download copy of call for special issue on 3D learning (pdf)

Journal Aims

IJTEL fosters multidisciplinary discussion and research on technology enhanced learning (TEL) approaches at the individual, organisational, national and global levels. Its key objective is to be the leading scholarly scientific journal for all those interested in, researching and contributing to the technology enhanced learning episteme. For this reason, IJTEL delivers research articles, position papers, surveys and case studies aiming:

• To provide a holistic and multidisciplinary discussion on technology enhanced learning research issues
• To promote the international collaboration and exchange of ideas and know how on technology enhanced learning
• To investigate strategies on how technology enhanced learning can promote sustainable development

Subject Coverage of Special Issue

This special issue seeks to bring together research, from different perspectives, on a range of 3D technologies that may be used to enhance or support learning.
Suitable topics may relate to, but are not limited to, the use of a range of 3D technologies in enhancing learning:

• Virtual Worlds
• Game-based Learning
• Immersive Simulation
• Augmented Reality
• Cross and mixed-reality
• Assessment in 3D environments
• Pedagogies for TEL in 3D environments
• Communities of Learners in 3D environments
• Standards and Interoperability

Submission

Prospective authors are invited to notify the intention to submit a paper by
sending a one-page abstract to the editors by 6th August 2010 and submit the full
paper by 6th September 2010.
Abstracts may be sent to the editors at cdk@it.uc3m.es or
daniel.livingstone@uws.ac.uk
Final papers should be submitted electronically via the InderScience online
submissions system at: http://bit.ly/ijtel

Important Dates

6th August 2010: Title and Abstract deadline (optional)
6th September 2010: Full paper submission deadline
15th October 2010: Decision notification
12th November 2010: Camera-ready version
Early 2011: Publication (tentative)

Guest Editors

Carlos Delgado Kloos, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911 Leganés (Madrid, Spain), cdk@it.uc3m.es
Daniel J. Livingstone, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley PA1 2BE (Scotland, UK), Daniel.Livingstone@uws.ac.uk

Editorial Committee

Ignacio Aedo, UC3M, Spain
John Belcher, MIT, USA
Josep Blat, Universidad Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Darryl Charles, University of Ulster, UK
Thomas Connolly, University of the West of Scotland, UK
Abdulmotaleb El Saddik, University of Ottawa, Canada
Lesley Gourlay, Coventry University, UK
Miguel Lizondo, Deimos-Space, Spain
Judith Molka-Danielsen, Molde University College, Norway
Mariano Rico, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
Pilar Sancho Thomas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
Kath Trinder, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK

The CAL Conference 2011