Beautiful weather in Seattle is the backdrop for this year's LOGIN conference, which is now in its second day. I'm sitting here digesting a delicious Mexican-themed lunch and listening with half an ear to the lunch keynote rambling on at the front of the room.
The awesome thing about LOGIN is that it's a very small conference. The benefit to this is it's very easy to not just meet people, but forge lasting connections. What I mean by this is when you go to GDC and meet someone, the chances are very good that you will not see them for the entire remainder of the week unless you actually call them up and arrange to meet. Here at LOGIN however you have a very, very good chance of just bumping into people repeatedly, which lets you continue that conversation you had last night. It's very valuable because once everyone goes back home, forging the connections becomes much, much harder.
So LOGIN is, as always, on the ball with that. The sessions I've attended so far have all been great: Brenda Brathwaite spoke about "leave your polygons at the door" which dumped her thoughts on the transition she went through going from designing Core AAA games to small casual games with Lolapps; Indie dev Corvus Elrod led a well-seated panel of indies in discussion on various roadblocks they have encountered along their way; Sheri Graner Ray talked about creating tutorials for you games that would benefit people who learn in various ways (visual, hands-on, audio); Brian Robbins talked about his reasonable success with iPhone development that's sustained him since 2008.
The best part is that there is a group here this year recording every session in the conference, and posting them online. My job just got easy!! :) Still though, myself, monalaw and jpetrie will still be writing up summaries that list key takeaways of sessions we sat in so you don't have to sit through a 45-60 minute video.
Parties! LOGIN has great parties and gatherings, and this year hasn't disappointed. There was a welcoming reception party on Monday night that was packed to the gills with people saying hello to old friends (myself included) and last night the IGDA Seattle chapter hosted a gathering in the private back room of a local bar, with open bar for 3 hours. My old friend Dave Weinstein (formerly Red Storm, now security analyst at Microsoft) also organized a private invite-only dinner for 23 people to a chef-owned restaurant for a 4-course meal. Dave's a culinary fan, so obviously the food was way above-average and delicious.
Well, the keynote is wrapping up so I need to continue Day Two here at LOGIN. Tonight is the conference party down the street at the Seattle Acquarium, which is awesome. They did that back in 2008 as well, you can walk through the exhibits and the main party room is where they have a huge tank taking up one entire wall.
Seriously, great content aside, LOGIN is one of the best conferences to make long-lasting connections to other people in this industry.
Oh and I also just met Stevie "Killcreek" Case, who was sitting next to me at lunch. Yea okay I had a crush as a kid (both a real crush and a nerd crush). *swoon*
