Recap: IGDA-Austin SXSW Party
By Bryon Lloyd
I don't usually tend to be biased, but the Dorkbot Party, sponsored by IGDA-Austin, Dorkbot, and Make Magazine, at SXSW was the place to be. I mean, come on, anyone can have alcohol, music and food. But we had alcohol, circuit bending techno and robots; it doesn't get any cooler than that.
You name one party anywhere else at SXSW where you could purchase metal bras. No dice! There happened to be another party right next door and our line to get in was around the corner messing with theirs. The only tense moment was when the fire marshal made his way through an extremely packed house.
The Austin chapter of the IGDA or International Game Developer's Association hosted an absolutely awesome party along with Make Magazine and Dorkbot Saturday during SXSW's ScreenBurn Festival. ScreenBurn is a section of SXSW's Interactive portion that is dedicated to gaming.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the IGDA, they create networking and collaboration opportunities for peers in the game development world. By joining your local chapter, you have an excellent opportunity to communicate and learn from others in game development. Meetings in the Austin chapter range from guided presentations, to game exposure experiences, to just good old-fashioned "have a drink and wax philosophically about Scrum or Mario" type meetings.
Make Magazine is created and published through O'Reilly Media, Inc. Their magazine could best be described as, "Home and Garden gone murderously wrong, in all the right ways." They show you unique modifications and home built projects that will have you digging through your toolbox and threatening every appliance and its warranty in the house.
Dorkbot is a creative collaboration of robot-loving and -creating individuals and teams from all over. Their robots are best described as works of art and less like that of "Johnny 5". They had many beautiful works on display from actual roving camera guided units to blooming mechanical flowers.
There were several music providers of the evening. The Geek Group and their singing tesla coils as well as a solo John Funk of http://www.bleeplabs.com and one of his creations took center stage during Open Dork microphone. The main music of the night was provided by Three Wave and DJ Greg Most.
Even after the evening beverage supply had dwindled, many still hung around to speak geek and deliberate time old quandaries like who was the best starship captain, Kirk or Picard. Yes, I was actually front row for this debate for a while. Eventually, the night wound down, and people filtered away to other venues. I suspect next year we will need twice to three times the room to pull it off again.
Great work to all of the people and volunteers of SXSW, ScreenBurn, IGDA-Austin, Make Magazine and Dorkbot for making it an awesome evening.
Posted by KainShin on May 3, 2007 09:19 AM
