The UMBC's Fifth Digital Entertainment Conference will be held on Saturday, April 30th. Every year, the UMBC Game Developer's Club invites speakers from area game companies to share their knowledge and experience. One of the strenghts of the UMBC program in Graphics, Animation and Interactive Media (GAIM) is its strong ties to game development studios in the Maryland, DC and Northern Virginia area.

This year's event is sponsored by Zynga, the studio that developed Farmville and many other Facebook games. It will feature speakers from Zynga, Firaxis, Pure Bang, and Dream Rock Studios. Here is the schedule.

• 10:00am Greg Foertsch, Project Art Director at Firaxis
• 11:00am Ed Zavada, Programmer at Dream Rock Studios
• 12:00pm Lunch
• 01:00pm Eric Jordan (UMBC 2007), Programmer at Firaxis
• 02:00pm Ben Walsh, CEO of Pure Bang Games
• 03:00pm Barry Caudill, Executive Producer at Firaxis
• 04:00pm Michelle Menard, Designer at Zynga

The DEC will be held in Lecture Hall 5 in the Engineering and Computer Science building. Admission is free and the conference is open to everyone.