Jane McGonigal, game designer and author, will be making a presentation at the BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 event.

The presentation will focus on how skills developed in video games can be harnessed for real life projects.

Better by play

Her recent book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World proposes that "the most difficult challenges facing humanity can be resolved by tapping into the skills demonstrated in gameplay."

McGonigal was director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for the Future, Creative Director of Social Chocolate and has worked on the development of titles such as EVOKE, World Without Oil, Crypt Zoo and Superstruct.

McGonigal will also be hearing five pitches from application developers at the event, offering her feedback and advice on how to improve their development.

BlackBerry DEVCON Americas 2011 will take place in San Francisco on October 18-20. McGonigal will be speaking on Wednesday 19 October.

The conference will naturally focus on Blackberry development and is customised for web, Adobe, native and Java developers. On site registration for the event will begin at 3:00pm on October 17.

If you are interested in attending you can visit the event website here.

[source: Blackberry]