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Programmer Tronster Hartley talks about working as a Conference Associate at the 2009 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
The Game Developers Conference has always been an enjoyable event and a fantastic opportunity for professional development. It's one of the largest game industry events held each year, with professionals from all disciplines attending - artists, programmers, producers, designers, audio engineers, and testers. There are an abundance of opportunities to see new games, technologies, and network with like-minded professionals. I've found that in order to get the most of the conference though, one should attend it as a Conference Associate, or CA.
CAs act as the eyes-and-ears of the conference, with the responsibility to make it as enjoyable as possible for the nearly 18,000 attendees and 400 session presenters. A CA has a varied amount of responsibilities, including badge checking, assisting speakers and A/V techs, data entry, bag stuffing, and the list goes on, including dozens of other unexpected tasks that crop up over the course of the 5 days.
Despite the amount of work, attending GDC as a CA is a lot of fun and when I’m not working a shift, I’m able to sit in on the sessions and see the show as an attendee. There are over a thousand applications each year to join the elite force of 400 CAs. The CA program heads, Tim Brengle and Ian MacKenzie, personally review each application; former CAs are not exempt and need to re-apply as well.
Like the conference itself, the rewards one gains from being a CA vary from person to person. Some enjoy instantly having 399 colleagues to chat with regarding the sessions and other conference activities, others use the opportunity to get feedback about personal projects being worked on at school or in the indie scene. Networking opportunities are abundant among the CAs, populated with rising stars and notable AAA devs such as Kim Swift, lead designer on "Portal". Additionally, game development celebrities tend to show up to visit the "CA Lounge" such as John Romero (lead designer for Doom), and Woz (co-founder of Apple).
The men and women who make the cut to be CAs have always demonstrated a passion and driven desire to excel in the game industry. I feel fortunate to be a part of such a program, and cannot imagine attending GDC without 399 colleagues at my side.
Tronster appears here (center, 2nd row or so) with roughly a quarter of the 2009 CAs. The rest were off helping GDC run smoothly.
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