Foodies on the Web, Jan. 30 - 31, 2009

Boston University's Food, Wine, and Art programs are hosting a symposium in January called "Foodies on the Web."

The goal of the Symposium on Food and New Media is to explore how, if at all, these new technologies have changed the way people eat, cook, share recipes, decide where to have dinner, learn about nutrition, or simply think about food?

Topics of interest include, but are by no means limited to, the following:

• Blogging
• Community building tools such as Yelp, Chowhound and Citysearch
• Online shopping (artisanal products, cooking tools, eBay, etc.)
• Wikis
• Web Video: YouTube, How-to’s
• Video, Web-based or other games (Cooking Mama, Diner Dash, Food Fight)
• Non-digital interactive forms such as interactive installations or museum exhibits

We welcome all perspectives, including:

• Explorations or critiques of the above technologies or tools
• Discussions of legitimacy and authority around the question, who gets to write about food?
• What is the role of a restaurant critic and food writer in the age of the web?
• Historical perspectives in terms of how these new forms of communication fit with or extend from more traditional forms: recipe books, restaurant criticism, newspaper columns, food TV, etc?
• Discussion of the ways these developments are seen as a threat to "traditional" media (i.e. TV, magazines and newspapers) and to "traditional" trades (i.e. restaurant critic, recipe writer, food writer, etc)

There is a call for papers (.pdf) with a Sep. 15 deadline.