James is an experienced conference speaker and lecturer, and an organiser of large public events. In 2000 he set up Gameforce Ltd to run the series of Dragonmeet games conventions in central London, and was its director for the next four years before the company was sold to Profantasy Software. He was co-organiser of GameCamp and the Brixton Book Jam.

James has compered, spoken at or chaired panels at many events including UK Games Expo, Dragonmeet, DiGRA Conference, StagConf, Interesting, Interesting North, Playful, Jump!, Bit of Alright, Geeky, LCC Futures, Warpcon, Gaelcon

He was a lecturer on the BSc (Hons) Computer Games Development degree course at the University of Westminster (2008-2010), on the BA (Hons) Game Design and Development course at London South Bank University (2010-2020) and the MA Game Design course at the National Film & Television School (2017-2020), as well as delivering guest lectures at several other universities and colleges.

He has appeared on Front Row on BBC Radio 4 and on Times Radio to talk about board games. In an earlier life he was co-presenter of the TV show Download Extra on the Sky channel [.tv].