Diversify your toolkit with this unique keynote address by Colorado State University political scientist, game designer, and 25-year military veteran Dr. James "Pigeon" Fielder: Before the Storm: Using Games for Local Crisis Response Preparation. Don’t miss this interactive session where using real-world examples and a proposed Colorado town scenario with audience participation, attendees will learn basic design techniques they can deploy immediately in crafting their own municipal crisis games. During this session attendees will learn: 

• Three game psychology tools for honing staff effectiveness and strategic leadership under crisis response conditions.
• Basic game design techniques focusing on objective-based design, core mechanics, and effective debriefing.
• How to apply games to generate relevant and actionable crisis planning hypotheses.

Join us and gain expertise on how basic design principles are equally useful for creating training scenarios and analytic scenarios. Register today and bring your team—discounts are available for groups of two or more!

About the speaker:

James "Pigeon" Fielder joined Colorado State University as an Instructor after retiring from the U.S. Air Force as a lieutenant colonel and associate professor of political science at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He also serves as a Marine Corps University Non-Resident Krulak Fellow for academic years 2021-2026, director of professional and educational games for Mobius Worlds Publishing, managing editor of Active Learning in Political Science, associate editor of Simulation & Gaming, and is on the editorial board of The MORS Journal of Wargaming.

Dr. Fielder researches interpersonal trust and emergent political processes through cyber-based interaction, and through tabletop and live-action gaming as natural experiments (also known as ludology, or the study of games and gameplay). He has over two decades of experience designing, executing, and assessing training exercises and wargames, from small-group tabletop discussions to multi-day exercises engaging 5,000+ participants. Dr. Fielder's media credits include TEDxMileHigh, Reuters, USA Today, and NBC News.