[casual_games] Welcome and Introductions

[Barry Joseph]

I am excited to see the development of this sig.

I thought I would take the opportunity to explain what I am doing 
here, considering I am an educator who works with NYC youth to 
develop their leadership abilities around global issues through 
various Internet projects.

Long story short - for three years we have explored what it means for 
youth to move from game consumers to producers. We have worked both 
on the level of casual games and at size of MMOGs, always 
incorporating social issues. We work closely with gameLab here in 
NYC. We developed a very rough prototype for a casual game about 
airport profiling post-911, but never secured the foundational 
support required to complete it.

However, the program that produced it, Playing 4 Keeps 
<http://www.globalkids.org/olp> just received funding from the 
Microsoft Corporation to significantly expand the program over the 
next few years. In part, this will entail the development of one 
professional casual game a year ,incorporating social content, with 
the Global Kids youth leaders. We just learned of this a few weeks 
ago and are tremendously excited about moving this forward.

I look forward to learning from all of you, as I know so little.

Barry
-- 

___________________________________
Barry Joseph
Director
Online Leadership Program
Global Kids
http://www.globalkids.org
http://www.NewzCrew.org

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