Anyways I was in the press lounge briefly to send and receive email and meet up with my student scholar to go over his schedule for the day. After that I had to run over to North Hall and visit the GDNet booth to see how they were doing, then head over to Gamespy for a media briefing on their tools and how they are targeting indie developers with Direct2Drive publishing as well.
Then it was off back to West hall to attend Mr. Mike McShaffry's talk on Bending MS Project to Your Will. I missed this talk last year due to a scheduling snafu, missed it again at Austin GDC for some reason I can't remember, and I had told him at the IGDA party I was going to be there today, so I made sure I was. Considering MS Project was originally made for house and construction projects (did no know this) and not for software, Mr. Mike used his long years of experience (he was with Origin working under Richard Garriot back in the day) and applied it to making Project work with software development. It took him a while, he used it since like 1992 and hated it until 2005. He shared a lot of tips and techniques and tricks and even has a free toolkit as a plugin for Project that will help you. He's also going to make the slides available online soon.
After hopping back over to the press lounge again real quick and starting on my previous journal post, I hopped back out and over to hear Alex and Bill Reed from Demiurge talk about handling tough financial times - and not even just in this economy but in general. I attended a talk Alex gave about Demiurge's bootstrapping back in 2006 and it was real good so I was interested to see what he and his father Bill had to say. It was a very informative talk and I even asked a question, which is something I rarely ever do. They talked about how to manage your cash flow, when to change your rates, how to negotiate your rates, how to handle fixed-price projects so you don't go underwater - good stuff. Demiurge does a lot of contract work, hence the focus on clients and contracts.
Then it was lunch time and today I actually got to eat a full lunch! The IGDA had their annual VIP luncheon, which they use to thank all the people who volunteer time for the IGDA's various SIGs, chapters, outreach, programs, etc. This will be Executive Director Jason Della Rocca's last year with the IGF, so he got a standing ovation as a send-off. He really built up the organization over the last 8 years into the driving force within the industry it is today. And he's a good friend to everyone so, bon voyage Jason! Also, the three principle organizers of the Global Game Jam were recognized with IGDA MVP awards as well.
Then I was on my way back from the luncheon and looked up and, lo and behold it was a pile of poo on top of the W hotel's XYZ lounge!! No way! How did it take this long for us to find a pile of poo in San Fran? Well, now we know where it is and can pay yearly homage to the pile of poo. Lissa says San Jose's was steamier tho, and I agree.
So I got back to the Expo and hung out at the both, throwing frisbees at random people, while Kevin just stuck to trying to score the hot chicks walking by with a frisbee toss. Yea he didn't do so well. But he tried. We had a couple people walk up and ask what we were all about, more that came by and was like "you guys rock!" and one who thanked us for 4E4, as his project InkWars in 2005 came in 3rd place and he and his teammate quit their jobs and started their own business and they are successful today. Rock on!
The image above is two guys throwing a GDNet frisbee around by the booth. Awesome.
After hanging round the booth I decided to take a quick Expo tour and see what was what. One thing I couldn't help noticing cause it was on the way to out booth from the entrance is this big huge empty spot in the floor. There's another one on the other side of the hall too. I also feel that the booths themselves are a bit more spread out this year. Not unexpected. I told Kevin he should arrange an Ultimate Frisbee tournament in the big open space. [smile]
And that's it! I walked around the Expo, ran into some old buds as usual, Dan Paladin from The Behemoth was milling about, he's the only one there since the crew was in Japan for their new game announcement and are wiped out from travel. They were nominated again for an award so he had to be around in case they won.
I had one more session lined up but I realized this would be the only chance I had to write a report, as the Game Developer Choice Awards are tonight and then the GDNet Dinner and then I am passing the fuck out for some serious catching up on sleep. I hope.
GDCA pre-show party kicks off in 15 minutes - gotta go!
