Collaboration Opportunities

YOUNG PROFESSIONAL & POST-GRADUATE STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAMME   

We are seeking talented and self-motivated people who might be interested in a 3/4 month placement split between metaLAB at SINC in the UK and, The Meraka Institute in South Africa. Currently, we have three types of opportunity.

1. Two or three games producers and developers who can social impact games suitable for Digital Doorways.  There is an Open Call Document (info) that can be downloaded, if you are interested.
2. A visually aware, technically competent, new media person who is sympathetic to open source and digital commons philisophies. The challenge is to work within a virtual team of UK and African colleagues as they apply a blended media approach to self-organising communities of African children and young people. The deliverable: to supply sample test content - new or repurposed from African material - which can be used within the evolutionary protoype during the Inception Phase.
3. Someone who understands all forms of ICT (including telecoms), international development, public policy and institution building in Africa. The challenge is to act as a research assistant to the Singazenzela Team. The deliverable : to populate and otherwise manage the collaborative wiki being used by the partners - including making an input into the 'living' programme documentation (PRINCE2).

Please send your CV and some thoughts about why you might like to get involved to michael.jenkins@metalab.co.uk

COMPANIES WISHING TO APPLY THEIR CONTENT CREATIVITY & GAMING EXPERTISE TO A PROJECT WITH HIGH SOCIAL IMPACT (Life Station)

With the Meraka Institute, HIVAN and others we are currently wrestling with the technical aspects of installing Linux on early Games Consoles, in order to assess their potential as a 'child proof' way of delivering a gaming approach to learning for african children - outside any institution and well beyond the reach of technical support!  We need your help - especially if you have old copies of the SDKs for any of the the early generation of consoles such as the Play Station.

We are seeking both companies and experienced individuals to work with us, 'pro-bono', to develop a small amount of sample content (e.g. flash, java etc) for the proof of concept phase of the Life Stations Initiative.

We are also interested in talking to companies who with experience in a variety of post production tasks such as:  formal evaluation of new titles, optimising performance on differing platforms and localisation.

We are always looking for old games consoles capable of modification to run Linux. (you cover the postage or delivery please). We are also interested in donations of pre-owned games - to help defray the R&D and sample content creation costs by African colleagues. Please contact us.

To find out more please email: michael.jenkins@metalab.co.uk