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On April 29th of this year, UMBC held there first annual Digital Entertainment Conference and Sid Meier, Seth Spaulding, Dan Magaha, and I were all there to speak along with representatives from Breakaway Games and Day 1 Studios. In the morning, Seth spoke on how to create a winning portfolio. In the afternoon sessions, Dan and I spoke about production in general and how producers fit into the "Firaxis Way" of doing things. The conference concluded with a rare speaking appearance by Sid himself and the lecture hall was packed with rapt listeners as Sid presented both his original prototype for Sid Meier's Railroads and the most recent version. He explained the value of early prototyping and rapid iteration as well as how to get around certain hurdles in the early stages when you have a limited team. I thought the event was very well organized and hope to see it continue to grow over the years. Hats off to Eric Jordan of UMBC for organizing an excellent conference. You can find pictures from the event here: http://www.umbcgdc.com/galleries.php?gallery=DEC.
That same week, on May second, Seth Spaulding, Tim McCracken and I joined representative from Breakaway and Big Huge for the second annual Game Developer's Roundtable at Bowie State University. The general format is that we give an overview of game development and then a representative from each department (art, programming, production, design, QA, etc.) gives a quick synopsis on what they do and how it fits into the development cycle. Tim was there to talk about QA, Seth spoke about portfolio creation and how to get an art position with a game company, and I spoke about development in general and the role of producers. After all had given their presentations ,the floor was opened to questions for the entire panel. The roundtable was not as well attended as last year, which is surprising as Bowie State is the first educational institution in the country to start their own IGDA chapter. I'm sure next year it will be back on form.
On July 14th, I flew to the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe Arizona for their semi-annual Tech Forum. The tech Forum is a wonderful, multi-day event featuring speakers from all facets of technology. There were people from the game and film industries as well as speakers on network security or even how technology is being used in the Justice Department. It was very interesting because the students actually in the lecture hall represented a small minority of those who were potentially watching via web cast or the school's internal television station. Questions could just as easily come from one of the online students in another state as from the person sitting in the front row. All in all, it was an exceptional event and the campus was very cool even if the temperature was 116 degrees both days I was there. http://www.uat.edu/techforum/
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