First WIGJ London Meetup set for Wednesday March 14th from 6.00 pm near Liverpool Street.
Women in Games Jobs is pleased to announce its first London Meetup set for Wednesday March 14th from 6.00 pm at The Alchemist, 133 Houndsditch, London, EC3A 7BX , near Liverpool Street station, London, UK.
These meetups are the opportunity for anyone interested in gaming to meet leading, female video game professionals and an opportunity for you to network with other women in the industry over a drink. Men are welcome too. Meets ups are planned quarterly, normally from 6.00 – 8.00 pm on a Wednesday evening near Liverpool Street, London, UK. Each meetup will include a talk from a prominent speaker from the games industry giving personal, practicable career tips and advice.
We are delighted to have as our first speaker Alison Cressey, former European MD for Activision. Alison’s talk is titled “So you know you have the professional X factor – why personal branding is so important to success.”
Alison Cressey is a senior executive and consultant advising leading companies on brand and content strategy and digital to build for future success. She has extensive experience in brand and digital strategy having worked on some of the world’s largest brands. She has also run multimillion $ P&L’s for global organizations. Prior to becoming a consultant Alison’s most recent roles included running the Lucas Arts and Activision Blizzard licensed/casual video games business across Europe. Whilst there Alison grew the Lucas Arts business from $20 to $150m. Alison was responsible for some of the world’s best known entertainment brands including Star Wars, Transformers and James Bond. Prior to that Alison oversaw marketing for Warner Bros. Entertainment including Theatrical, DVD, TV, licensed products, consumer products and mobile where she increased revenues by $10m+ and changed the way Warner Bros did marketing.
This is an informal, free event where you can turn up on the night but we would like to get a good idea of numbers, so please register your interest at our dedicated Meetup Group at http://www.meetup.com/WIGJMeetup/
Join over 500 following Women in Games Jobs on Twitter at @wigj !
Our recently launched Twitter account now has over 500 followers. Join us at http://twitter.com/wigj Our Twitter account is @wigj and we use the #wigj hashtag to group together tweets on the same women in games subject.
Women in Games Jobs MeetUps in London to be launched shortly.
Watch this space! Cassandra Donnelly has joined the Women in Games Jobs team as Project Manager to extend the outreach to women who want to meet on a more regular basis than just at the annual conference. Cassandra recently attended the WIGJ lunch at Develop and has plans to organise regular meetings in the evening in London, UK. If you have any suggestions for Cassandra you can reach her at cassandra AT wigjobs DOT com. Volunteers for speakers are welcome.
Ella Romanos, MD of Online and Mobile developer Remode Studios with Game Careers
Ella Romanos, MD and co-owner of Remode, an interactive production and game development studio in the UK, talks to David Smith of Game Careers in Brighton. Remode create their own original games and also work with clients and partners to deliver interactive content across web, mobile and gaming platforms. Remode’s debut game, Mole Control, was released worldwide in 2010 across Steam and other PC download portals and was a finalist in the European Europrix Multimedia Awards. The game has subsequently been published at retail in North America by leading casual game publisher Mumbo Jumbo and is currently on sale in stores such as Amazon and Walmart. Client projects include an iPhone/iPad game for CITV’s show Tati’s Hotel, online games for TV shows such as Franklin & Bash and Top Chef, a training simulation for PADI and an online virtual world for kids. Ella grew up between Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the UK, and in 2008 received a 1st class honours from University of Plymouth’s Digital Art & Technology BSc. Having previously worked for London-based Specialmoves, her background is in programming and user-centred design, but she now spends most her time on business development, project management, strategy and sales! She was a finalist in the 2011 UK Women in Technology awards ‘Innovator of the Year’ category, speaks at international conferences such as MIPTV and Develop and has co-founded the South West’s first games conference, Extended Play.
Her advice for job seekers looking to apply to smaller company like Remode: “I think the biggest difference between the bigger studios and small ones like us is that whilst you need to be good at something, you also need to have a broader skill set. So if you are an artist you may be best at modelling, but you probably also need to be able to do other stuff as well to pitch in on projects.” View the full clip here:
Over 400 in Women in Games Jobs Facebook Group. Join our professional network.
We’re happily announcing that our newly created Facebook Group page for Womeningamesjobs.com has over 400 Facebookers! Yippeee!
The aim of the Group is to broaden out the message of WIGJ, bringing in new interest for the site as well as raising awareness of the opportunities for women out there.
We hope that the Group will enable those previously unawares of our message and aims to be welcomed into the fray and to get to know us, making connections and networking with established professionals as well as others with similar interests. We’d also like to encourage conversations and discussions on the topics and issues posted and linked to the Group.
So please join us, support the group to continue raising the interest for Women in Games Jobs! Spread the news; we look forward to seeing you on there!
Over 2700 join our own Women In Games Jobs LinkedIn networking group. You can too!
Join THE professional network for women in online and video gaming! If you are a women in the games industry and member of LinkedIn, you can now get together with over 2700 others who share the same interests. We think this could be the largest grouping of women in games in Europe. Dont miss out on the inside track!
Please link through to http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2739553 . Start a discussion, share news! Just join the group and start networking. Good luck.
Positive Role Models of Women in Video Games – A personal project by Canadian Cam Meiklejohn
Recruiting more women into games: Highlights video from European Women in Games Conference
Too busy, too far away, just thought it a waste of time or never even heard about it, you can now get a flavour of what you missed. Whatever reason you could not make it to the European Women in Games Conference, London on 22 September 2011, here is the highlights video of the conference brought to you courtesy of James Hakesly Photography. Sold out and packed into the downstairs conference suite of the NH Harrington Hall Hotel, London, some of the games industry’s most successful female achievers inspired other women seeking to enter the games industry and those wishing to progress their careers at the annual European Women in Games Conference and Networking event. If you are interested in joining the WIGJ professional network, we recommend you should join over 2500 other supporters in our LinkedIn group.
Change the default resolution of 360p to 720p and see the full clip below in glorious HD.
Frederique Doumic of OUAT & Louise Murray of Lionhead – first inductions into Euro Hall Of Fame
James Hakesley Photography
Frederique Doumic, CEO of OUAT Entertainment and Louise Murray, Head of Fable Franchise at Lionhead Studios are the first 2 to be inaugurated into the European Women in Games Hall of Fame.
In an exciting finale to the European Women in Games Conference, the announcement and presentation was made by Alison Cressey, former Europe GM at Activision supported by Ginger Graham, Global Diversity and Inclusion Manager for Awards Sponsor, Electronic Arts, who came over from the US especially for the Conference. The Hall of Fame seeks to highlight the significant contribution of women to the games industry as well as promote role models to those women considering working in games. Voted on by peers in the Women in Games Jobs network, we expect this award to become an annual event.
Frederique Doumic is CEO of OUAT Entertainment which was she co-founded in 1999 in Angouleme, France. OUAT Entertainment creates, designs and publishes video games for women and kids, in clear ‘casual games’. Since 2008, her company has produced its own casual games: Miss Teri Tales series (3 titles); pure hidden and Eden’s quest.
Louise Murray is the Head of the Fable Franchise at Microsoft Games Studio Lionhead where she has been leading the development on Fable 3. Louise picked up the Action Adventure category BAFTA award for Fable 2 in 2009 on behalf of the development team. She joined Lionhead in 2005 and became Head of Studio. Previously she worked at Criterion.
Our congratulations go to Frederique and Louise and the other 3 shortlisted nominees: Dr. Linda Breitlauch, Professor of Games Design, Media Design University of Applies Science; Siobhan Reddy, Studio Director at Media Molecule and Fiona Sperry, Studio Director and VP, Criterion Games
Inspiration abounds at the European Women in Games Conference 2011, London
James Hakesley Photography
Thursday September 22nd 2011 at NH Harrington Hall Hotel, London, some of the games industry’s most successful female achievers inspired other women seeking to enter the games industry and those wishing to progress their careers – at the annual European Women in Games Conference and Networking event.
Women in Games Jobs founder David Smith was delighted, “Thank you to all who came today – doubling our expected turn out for this, our first Conference event. Thanks to our keynote speaker Fiona Sperry, Studio Director and VP, of EA Criterion Games, and Jude Ower, CEO of The PlayMob. Both of who shared key career insights and inspirations which I am sure everyone here today appreciates greatly.”
Fiona Sperry’s down to earth and frank story of her career journey centred on her fundamental belief that quality brings success. Of this, Fiona said, “Perform well and you should be rewarded for it. Take responsibility for your journey and do what you love – the one characteristic that winners share is that they care more than anyone else.”
Jude Ower agreed with this and demonstrated her slightly different route into the games industry via educational games. She demonstrated how games can have an extraordinarily positive and real effect on people and the world around us by demonstrating their new core platform GiverBoard. This connects games to charities, allowing game play to be used to donate money to real world charities. Already showing huge success with its first campaign and appreciation and support from the gaming community we are sure to see more of this from The PlayMob.
Professional Enterprise Coach, Andrew Tilling of Preseli Partnerships took the attendees on a more personal journey, helping every attendee to clarify their thinking on where they are at now and to examine where they want to be. He introduced the meanings of success and ways of reframing obstacles whilst always keeping an eye on your goal.
A quick fire Q&A session followed with a panel of games experts including Antonia Cullum, Talent Manager, Natural Selection; Ali Bergstrom-Allen, Senior Producer, Sony Computer Entertainment; Maggie Berry, MD, Women in Technology; Louise Murray, Head of Fable Franchise, Lionhead Studios; and Prof. Dr. Linda Breitlauch, Professor of Games Design at Media Design University of Applied Sciences, Germany. All took a variety of questions encouraging different approaches of getting into and progressing to the top of the games industry. Topics were raised on how best to present your CV and how to make the most of networking opportunities. It seems clear that male or female is you have passion and talent you can go far.
An exciting finale to the Conference was announcement and presentation by Alison Cressey, former Europe GM at Activision, of the newly launched Hall of Fame Awards which this year went to Frederique Doumic, CEO of OUAT Entertainment and Louise Murray, Lionhead Studios. The Hall of Fame will now grow year on year to celebrate the achievement of women across the industry.
A special thanks goes to Ginger Graham, Global Diversity and Inclusion Manager for Electronic Arts who came over from the US, especially for the Conference. A key sponsor, they support the bringing of their organisation into alignment with the diversity of their customers and game players. Ginger said, “EA knows the importance of reaching and supporting top talent on a global scale. We are very proud to sponsor the Women in Games Jobs luncheon which will provide an intimate venue for collaboration, networking and sharing best practices.”
This year’s conference focused on career development and revealed some secrets of success from the very best speakers working in this creative industry. We hope it will inspire those attending – helping to recruit into and retain more women in this, currently male dominated, video games industry
