Announcing 'The Conversation'

I'm very excited to post the first news about 'The Conversation,' a gathering that has been in the works for seven or eight months now. It takes place October 17th and 18th in the San Francisco Bay Area, at the wonderful Pacific Film Archive theater on the edge of the UC/Berkeley campus.

The basic idea is simple: let's get together a really interesting group of people to talk about new technologies and the entertainment industry. Games. Digital cinema and digital distribution. Set-top boxes and mobile phones. Online financing and fundraising. Building audiences in the digital world. And any other topic that you feel is important.

We've already invited a great group of "conversation leaders" to talk about the world from their perspective. The goal is to avoid PowerPoint overload, long speeches, and a passive audience sitting there responding to e-mails. We're aiming for discussion, debate, and sharing ideas and experiences.

We want your help, in suggesting other topics that ought to get covered, and other people (perhaps you, or someone you know?) who'd be ideal to cover them. Feel free to post comments here or use the event's wiki. (The latter method is better, and not too complicated.)

We have room in the theater for 222 people, and we're doing our best to keep prices low. While most conferences about digital media and the future of the entertainment industry tend to cost $1000 or $2000 bucks or more, the price for a pass to be part of The Conversation is $99 (beware: that price will rise to a stratospheric $149 as the date gets closer.)

I'm hoping you can make it; I have a hunch it'll be a lot of fun, and it's certainly taking place at an important moment in the transformation of business and art and process of creating entertainment.

And if you can't make it, we're hoping it'll be copiously blogged, and possibly podcast, too.

(Thanks to the Berkeley Center for New Media and Variety for jumping on board as our first two sponsors!)