UCLA was host to a Games and Girls conference this afternoon, after a couple of days of academic workshops to encourage the dialogue about the state of women gaming. I anticipated that it would be good, and it was.

Brenda Laurel was on the first panel, and she was brilliant, as one would expect. Brenda Laurel has pioneered our understanding of interactive spaces for many years. All of the speakers were incredibly smart and articulate women, here are a few:

Mimi Ito: Mimi is a cultural anthropologist who has done a lot of work studying children and digital media in Japan and the US. She also had a candy pink Nintendo DS and instigated a wonderful Pictochat that ran on through a good portion of the conference. She's promised to post pictures of the DS meetup, which as I recall included 3 pinks, 3 silvers and 1 teal.

Morgan Romaine, Rhoulette from the Frag Dolls, was wonderfully articulate about the creation and controversy of the Frag Dolls and pointed out that the heart of that controversy is really based in a more fundamental feminist debate. She told a great story about walking into an EB games recently where the fellow behind the counter assumed she was buying a game for a friend, rather than for herself. She would like to live (and game) in a world where there aren't such assumptions.

Daniel James, who co-founded Three Rings and brought us the brilliant Puzzle Pirates spoke eloquently on the genuine goodness of independent games, and the importance of keeping gaming free from regulation and governmental vice. Plus, he wore a dashing three corner hat and had a terrifically sexy accent. Come to think of it, he didn't say nearly enough.

Holin Lin, a professor in the Department of Sociology at National Taiwan University, discussed the nature of gaming and gender in Taiwan. We hear a lot about gaming in Korea, but not as much about Taiwan. Unfortunately, the entire conference took place over the course of 4 hours, so we didn't get to hear as much as we would have liked.

There were many other bright and interesting women, and you can see more bios here.
The event was standing room only and a mere 4 hours. They could have hosted a public 2 day event prior to E3 easily.

Today's pre-E3 events definitely had a theme of inclusion, from Nintendo's inspired call for lapsed and non-gamers to join the ranks of the hard core to UCLA's invitation to women gamers all over the world. The show itself starts in the morning, and it will be interesting to see if that theme holds over the next two days.