I was approached by Gail Randall of the Greater Worcester Community Foundation to be the guest speaker at one of their monthly executive board meeting to discuss interactive media and games as resources for nonprofits. I gave a presentation to help the leaders of the various nonprofits understand how games can be leveraged to encourage participation, further awareness, and inspire empathy for their causes and organizations. They found the talk informative and were excited by the possibilities. After gaining approval from Paul Cotnoir, I spoke with Randall and asked if she thought it would be beneficial if Becker College were to host a one day conference to present further information to numerous organizations, opening it up to all her members, not just the board. Our goal was to also help connect these local organizations with our game students for the purpose of internship opportunities.

        I set up a fast-track internship program for attending organizations with Rich Davino and Leslie Germond. We also worked with Monty Sharma of MassDiGI who assembled a respected panel of speakers for the event, while I served as the keynote. We provided a formal lunch, a branded gift, and printed resources to all attendees. The event also holds its own webpage on the Becker site as a repository of the presentations and resources, as well as being the kick-off point for developing an internship relationship with the college.  

       The ‘pod’ is a system I designed to allow a group of students to intern in order to provide a more complete range of services to these non-game industry organizations while also allowing students to be more empowered to accomplish goals during the constrained time-frame of an internship. Further, after a pod has worked with an organization, their work can be submitted as a proposal for our Interactive Media Studio or the MassDiGI Live Studio to acquire. This will allow the project to be developed at a studio level, thus moving from concept and prototype to production.

        The event was well attended with over 20 organizations represented, and a number of those signed up with our Becker Career Connector. Over the summer, two of these organizations provided five internships for our students. The Fruitlands Museum was able to re-launch its mobile encyclopedia of artifacts in mobile stores, while Preservation Worcester released a game developed entirely during the three month period that showcases the loss of some of the city’s unique historic properties in an immersive manner.

        I have served as a volunteer for nonprofits for many years, and I strongly believe that we cannot overlook the surge in for-profit industries taking full advantage of the power of games in order to make an impact. It is critical that socially sensitive and globally aware organizations like Becker College offer solutions so that nonprofits can avoid the tremendous development costs associated with game production yet still benefit from being able to offer effective, provocative media which is now considered a standard for communicating with and reaching our society.