EA Symposium This Saturday

If you find yourself in the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend, you might wander over to Electronic Arts’ Redwood City campus.

First: Hey! You can finally walk onto EA’s Redwood City campus without getting tossed out on your keester by a couple of EA Stormtroopers. That alone is pretty cool.

Second: The company is holding an all-star panel on homophobia and virtual communities in conjunction with the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).

Panel members will include:

• Flynn DeMarco (aka: Fruite Brute), founder of GayGamers.net;
• Dan Hewitt, senior director of communications for the ESA;
• Caryl Shaw, senior producer at Maxis Studios (The Sims);
• Cyn Skyberg, VP of customer relations, Linden Labs (Second Life);
• Stephen Toulouse (GT: Stepto), aka: The Banhammer, aka: King Karaoke, aka program manager for policy enforcement at XBLA (aka: the guy who bans all those “offensive” gamertags and suspends those accounts for abuse);
• Moderator: Justin Cole, director of digital and online media, GLAAD.

Sure wish we could go, if only to ask questions to Stepto about why certain Gamertags are banned, but others are not. This is going to be a great day, and knowing EA, they’ll prolly feed you, too.

Here’s the deets:

WHAT:    Homophobia in Virtual Communities - Highlighting the Problem and Working Towards Sustainable Solutions
WHEN:    Saturday, July 18th, 2009, 11am-1pm
WHERE:   Electronic Arts, 250 Shoreline Drive Redwood City, CA 94065

The event is free of charge and open to the public.  More information can be found at: http://www.glaad.org/digitalevent.