Women in Games was established in 2004 and has run five successful conferences with delegates and speakers from around the world. The unique atmosphere of the conference is in part a result of not only featuring peer reviewed academic papers but also giving a voice and an opportunity to network to women working in the games industry. Although the conference focuses on women, men are also encouraged to participate both as speakers and delegates.

Previous hosts were the University of Portsmouth (2004), University of Abertay Dundee (2005), University of Teesside (2006) and the University of Wales, Newport (2007) and joint hosting by the game developer Rare with the University of Warwick in 2008. The conference has been a valuable opportunity for these institutions to promote their commitment to running world class games courses and has given them worldwide recognition both through the conference, press coverage (online, radio, TV magazines, newspapers), the Women in Games website and email promotion of the conferences.

The conference attendance has been between 70 and 100 people. The host institution is expected to underwrite the event with any money earned beyond their costs returned to Women in Games. The hosting institution requires someone who is responsible for organising and running the event, with the support of the Women in Games steering committee.

See the Women in Games website, www.womeningames.com, for further details of previous conferences. Please note that we have endeavoured to make this conference accessible by keeping the booking fee as low as possible.

The bottom line is that we want to see that whoever takes on the conference is able to do a professional job. They must be committed to the conference and have the resources to deliver it. They must also appreciate that although they will be supported by the committee that they will be responsible for the organisation of the conference and will have to pull it all together.

In addition to this commitment to running the conference we also like to see some idea for an overall theme to the conference - this theme can be tweaked at a later date but it is good to see some initial ideas. One of the distinctive characteristics of Women in Games is the link between academia and industry so it would also be good to see what sort of links the host might make with industry for the conference (hopefully building on existing partnerships).

As a minimum we need to know something about:

Personnel - who will run it - brief bios

Venue - where will it be held/accommodation - normally a lecture theatre and room for hosting demonstrations of games. Maybe a classroom for practical sessions.

Vision - conference theme, normally aligned with interests of the host institution

Support offered by the host institution (i.e. underwriting the costs) - is the institution keen on the conference?

Proposed date(s) for the conference (currently we are keen on sometime in February 2010, but this is negotiable)

Costs - overall cost of conference with a short break down and also proposed delegate costs (subject to change later...)

At this stage the above can be very brief; the 2008 Warwick/Rage proposal was 5 pages long with a spreadsheet showing estimated costs.

Please email enquiries@womeningames.com with any questions, suggestions or declarations of interest.