miscellaneous
Vote for the IGDA Board!
Members! The time has come for you to express your voice in the IGDA's leadership! My friend Scott Macmillan has reviewed the candidates here:
http://www.macguffingames.com/blog/
Vote here:
http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=d239b70fc6659f7d5fc1e4bd8&id=7ee9ea2e74
Remember, your vote makes a difference to the IGDA!
Permissions
Permissions on the group should be fixed now. Please let me know if you come across any other problems.
-Sela
Global Game Jam
The Global Game Jam is coming up at the end of January and I wanted to gauge our chapter's interest in participating. I spoke with Norb and Jerry a couple nights ago at the Games Gateway meetup, who are a couple members of the chapter from before the Big Collapse of 2007, and they mentioned some contacts from the local SIGGRAPH group who might be able to offer space for participating in the GGJ. I took part in this last year at MIT and it was a lot of fun; is anyone else interested in participating?
Other Groups
Now would probably be a good time to pimp our other groups.
Along with this site, we have the following methods of keeping up with chapter members:
Our Twitter List: http://twitter.com/alexlifschitz/igda-rochester (Please let us know if you would like to be added.)
Our Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/igda-rochester?hl=en
Our Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=info&ref=ts&gid=190839496856
We hope to see you all at our first meeting, and hopefully use these to keep everyone in the loop.
One Laptop Per Child
Today One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the non-profit organization started by MIT's Nicholas Negroponte which is devoted to creating and providing laptop computers for children in developing countries, opened up its "Give one, get one" program.
For $425 (with shipping) you can give an XO laptop to a child in a developing country and get another one for yourself or to give to a child in your life. You also get a free year T-Mobile HotSpot access!
Student Scholarships for GDC 2008
The IGDA has just launched the Student
Scholarship Program for GDC08. Twenty-five
college students will be awarded complimentary
"Main Conference" passes to the 2008 Game
Developers Conference. The deadline to enter is
Friday, December 7th, 2007. Recipients will be announced mid January.
Applicants are required to be full-time college
students (or equivalent) and IGDA student members
for consideration. Scholarship applications will
be judged by a panel of professional game developers.
The Pittsburgh IGDA chapter has had several scholarship winners in the past so if you are a local student, we really encourage you to enter.
Students can now apply online:
http://www.igda.org/scholarships/
And don't forget, even you aren't a student or you don't win a scholarship, you can still get $50 off your GDC pass if you are an official IGDA member- just another perk of being part of the IGDA!
New Year and Gamehotel
Wow 2007 started warm and cozy, at least here in central Switzerland!
Last year there was the Gamehotel event in Zurich and I thought it would be a good idea to start this new year with a look back to that event. Spot@nothing had to say this about Gamehotel (in German, ask Babelfish for a translation):
http://blog.nothing.ch/2006/10/gamehotel-2006-grosse-namen-an-einem-kleinen-event/
Now that things are slowing down again from the end year run in late 2006, I look forward to an interesting 2007 and more interesting IGDA chapter meetings.
How to announce a conference
Since the beginning of 2007 I received about 10 emails telling me that there will be an "Electronic Entertainment Expo" in Australia somewhen end of March 2007. All the emails contained tons of pictures and the text that I should not "MISS OUT ON BEING A PART OF THE BIGGEST SHOW IN 2007".
If the expo is as big as the amount of mails sent, they are definitely right about "the biggest show". Now this is what I call marketing. 
Update (24.1.2007)
Another email from the same event. They really are working on getting an entry in my blacklist.
EA and TakeTwo are coming to Geneva!
I just learned today, that EA and TakeTwo are opening offices in or around Geneva!
http://www.geneva.ch/_electronic_arts_headquarters_geneva_location.htm
Electronic Arts today announced plans to create an international headquarters for its publishing business in Geneva, Switzerland.
And
http://www.geneva.ch/take-two.htm
Take-Two, a leading worldwide publisher, developer and distributor of
interactive entertainment software, hardware and accessories, establishes its international headquarters for publishing in Geneva.
What a nice surprise!
Studio Visits
One of the things we would like to do in the New Year is get out and have some of the local studios host chapter meetings. That way people can come and check out your work and see how different teams go about creating games. If your studio is interested in hosting a chapter meeting, email us at la@igda.org and we can discuss the details.
