Play, Happiness, Imagination, Learning

Hello! Welcome to the blog of Philip Minchin (or Phil Minchin, I answer to the nickname too – as the title of this blog suggests 🙂 ).

For the last few years, I’ve been advocating for games and play as essential parts of culture, particularly in a library context. (For an outline of why I hold this view, read this series I wrote for the International Games Day @ your library blog.) I’ve also been exploring new opportunities for libraries in the online world, moving from the old one-way, broadcast models of publishing to more two-way, networked one. And I’ve been writing and designing for games, both electronic and tabletop.

If you need to contact me, I’m available via Gmail – I’m euchronic there.

I’ve been happily working in the background, but it’s getting to the point where I need a central online location for all my various bits and bobs so people can find me easily. So here it is! More to come soon.

I’ve presented at numerous conferences, conventions, and library services; those with public links are:

• VALA 2012
• Cracking ‘the hard nut’: creative approaches to teen and adult literacy
• Connecting the dots: people, libraries and technology
• Penny Arcade Expo 2013
• Upcoming APILI conference

I’ve also written a paper on libraries in the age of interactivity, which touches on questions of play but focuses more on the structural role of libraries.

I’ve had blog posts selected as weekly Feature posts on game designer site Gamasutra.

In 2011, I was instrumental in getting the ALA to recognise that its National Gaming Day @ your library was in fact an International Games Day @ your library, in 2012 I founded the Global Gossip Game to link libraries worldwide for the event, and in 2013 I ran the IGD@yl blog and took the GGG to all seven continents.

I’ve been a consultant to various games companies on working with libraries to share their games with audiences. I also do freelance creative writing and worldbuilding work; in the last couple of years I’ve contributed to numerous tabletop RPG books, including an Adventure Path, half-a-dozen Player Companions and the Bestiary 4 for Paizo Publishing’s Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

I’ve been a consultant to libraries around games, as an important part of culture in themselves, as the basis for interesting new forms of literature, as tools for promoting both traditional and new modes of literacy, as promotional tools to bring people into the library, and as a simple source of fun. Most notably, I prepared a Games & Interactivity Strategy for Melbourne Library Service around their new Docklands Library (opening in mid-2014).

I’m a contact point for library e-Game lending – I’ve been advocating for a few years now that libraries need to work with vendors (I particularly recommend Valve Software’s Steam product) to develop an e-lending solution for electronic games, and one of my current projects is acting as a central clearinghouse for people interested in that prospect.

And I’m currently beginning the work of establishing APILI, an institution that will be to play and games what the National Library of Australia is to the archived written word, ACMI is to the moving image, and the National Gallery is to the visual arts… only with key parts of its work being (a) more fun and (b) more readily accessible through local communities’ own libraries and schools.

Here’s my standard intro blurb if you need it:

Trained in history, literature, classics and archaic languages, Philip Minchin has worked in publishing, arts production, NGO governance and campaigning, and library IT in Melbourne, Australia. There he got interested in the evolving relationships between libraries, communities, games, interactivity, systems and UI design. He now presents and consults to libraries on these issues, helping to develop games & interactivity strategies that blend the best of old and new media to support intelligent, literate engagement across the full range of modern culture. He also writes game content for Open Design and Paizo Publishing, among others, and volunteers for International Games Day @ your library (Saturday November 15 in 2014) – including running the Global Gossip Game, a not-so-little exercise in information theory and silly community-building fun.