Hi guys,

As you all know, Extended Play festival is going to be held this 3rd-5th November.  The festival is being announced nationally this week and has already had some great press on the Guardian site.

We have been working over the last couple of months to get things organised and the website has been updated today to reflect that, with some speakers announced and info about what is going on: http://www.explay.co.uk

On the Friday and Saturday of the festival we are hosting talks, panels and fun activities throughout the day and we would really like the community to get involved by submitting ideas for more activities.  

Some examples which are already in the pipeline are Thunderchats (a chance for designers, developers and creatives to talk for 5 minutes about their best work, new ideas, live coding, mashups, etc.) and a LAN gaming event, other ideas could include ARG’s around Plymouth, a Winnitron machine which needs public access all day, use of the 4D cinema (ask us for spec & more info), multiplayer gaming sessions, live demo projections, interactive experiences or anything else you can think of!  We want ideas that will engage audiences through them either participating or watching.

Any activity submitted will be organised by the person or group who have submitted it, in coordination with the rest of the festival.  We have a few different spaces available, including the green room, which is (approx) a 4x4m space and the auditorium which seats up to 100 people. If you have equipment requirements let us know and we will work with you to try and source those.

These activities will be hosted within the main Aquarium conference facilities and we are looking for submissions which fit into an hour slot.  However, we don’t want to discourage ideas that might be a bit more crazy and need more space or time, so if you want to run something which doesn’t fit within those restrictions please submit and we will see what we can do to support it!  

Ben from Mutant Labs and myself will be doing a short talk at the next meetup (Thursday 1st September @ Roundabout) to give you an overview of the festival, but we are open to ideas now, so any questions or submissions please email me at ella@explay.co.uk by 16th September.  

Thanks!

Ella