From our IGDA friends up north:
Darius Kazemi writes:
Scott Macmillan and I are hosting the second annual Boston GameLoop, an all-day unconference on Saturday, August 15th in Cambridge, MA. It's a self-organizing game conference: people show up and, if they have a talk they'd like to give or a roundtable they'd like to moderate, they throw it up onto the board. There are rooms for people to meet in, and a big board with a schedule grid to coordinate it all. Last year's GameLoop was a huge success: we had 42 attendees from about 25 companies, including 2K Boston, Harmonix, Rockstar New England, and MTV Networks. But while last year was mostly Boston and NYC people, this year we already have attendees coming from Xbox Live in WA and Bethesda Softworks in MD.
The signal-to-noise ratio at a conference like GameLoop is pretty astounding. What I like best about it is that it's just developers talking about stuff they want to talk about. Last year we had sessions about procedural animation, ethics in rulesets, distributed version control, and many others. Some sessions were incredibly small and focused, just three really passionate people who don't know each other discussing a topic they care about. Other sessions were more like standard conference lectures. You can see the whole 2008 schedule, along with some audio and notes from the sessions, here:
http://www.bostongameloop.com/event-recap
Keep in mind that none of this was really planned! A lot of the sessions were born out of discussions over breakfast in the morning.
There's no entrance fee, but we will ask people to donate $20 or so to help us cover costs, if they're willing. Our plan is to sponsorship for breakfast and lunch. That night, groups of people will head to dinner to hang out. And as a side note - we're limiting attendance to industry professionals. Academics and students who have worked as devs are considered professionals, but basically we want this to be a by devs, for devs event. And yes, indie devs count as devs! We pretty much just care that you make games in some capacity.
IF YOU LIVE OUTSIDE OF BOSTON: Scott and I are more than happy to try and set you up with crash space while you're here for GameLoop. Just let us know if you'd like that and we'll see if we can arrange it. We can also recommend nearby hotels.
If you'd like to RSVP, drop us a line at bostongameloop@gmail.com, and we'll add you to the list. Then you'll receive a logistical email with travel details, etc. We've set up a wiki at www.bostongameloop.com with more info on things - please feel free to take a look. We'd also love to get some possible talks up on there - if you're interested in speaking on something, just let us know.
To donate, go here: http://www.bostongameloop.com/pay-for-registration
We hope you can make it! We also hope you'll pass the word on to other industry types that you know, maybe even send a note to your company's internal boards or lists.
-Darius
