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Registration is now Open – Get your Early Bird pass now!

Posted by TobyAllen on July 14th, 2009

Registration_OpenThis year’s registration for the IGDA Leadership Forum 2009 is now open! Please register for your early pass here. Industry Veteran Chris Satchell, Brett Douville of Bethesda Softworks, and David Steele of EA are just a few of the confirmed speakers headlining IGDA’s 2009 Leadership Forum. We would like to remind you that that the early bird registration prices are an inviting $350 for Members and $395 for Non-members (Complimentary IGDA Membership included in price for non-members) – All attendees will also get a complimentary t-shirt! Places are limited so please register early to take advantage of our lower prices and guarantee yourself  a spot at the conference! This year is looking to host a series of cracking sessions! The San Francisco Airport Marriott is the headquarters hotel for the IGDA Leadership Forum. A block of sleeping rooms with a group rate of $129.00 single/double is available to registrants of the IGDA Leadership Forum. View the dedicated Hotel/Travel info page for complete details. We are looking to seeing you at the conference!

You can follow us on Twitter

Posted by TobyAllen on May 26th, 2009

Twitter As we get closer to the forum date, we are allowing people to follow us on Twitter. Any posts will be twittered so that you can stay up to date with the latest information and news.

Any problems, give us a tweet.

Call for Speakers

Posted by JasonDellaRocca on February 25th, 2009

We invite your participation in the third annual IGDA Leadership Forum, focused on advancing the state of the art in game production and management. The conference is valuable for people in leadership positions in game development, and for individuals who want to develop their leadership skills. This includes producers at all levels, discipline leads, project managers, studio directors, and all others seeking to become better leaders, create successful games, and learn from other working professionals in the game industry.

The second IGDA Leadership Forum was a smashing success with top rated sessions by Mark Cerny (Cerny Games), Michael Saladino (EA), David Edery (Microsoft), and Curtis Creamer (Bungie). In addition, we welcomed 330+ delegates from over 12 countries, including the UK, Sweden and Australia.

The 2009 IGDA Leadership Forum will continue the format of three tracks – Personal, Project, and Studio – that encompass a broad range of leadership topics. The sessions will run in parallel tracks and will consist of a mix of lectures, panels, and interactive workshop sessions.

Personal Leadership sessions will cover the skills we all need to be successful leaders, such as:

  • developing leadership skills
  • effective communication
  • entrepreneurialism and taking initiative
  • persuasion and making ideas stick
  • handling challenging situations/conflict resolution
  • problem-solving
  • personal time management and “life hacking”
  • career planning

Project Leadership sessions will focus on the nuts and bolts of game production, such as:

  • development methodologies and best practices
  • multi-platform development
  • working with leads effectively
  • risk assessment and analysis
  • scheduling and scoping techniques
  • pipeline optimization
  • pre-production and prototyping
  • post-mortems and case studies
  • developing for handheld and MMO platforms
  • certification process for Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo
  • outsourcing and remote development

Studio Leadership sessions will cover broader scale topics that go beyond a single team or project, such as:

  • navigating the rough economy
  • multi-team/site management
  • team-building
  • company culture and sharing a core vision
  • motivation and morale
  • hiring and retention strategies
  • 3rd party relationship management
  • studio lifecycle planning and scaling
  • HR best practices
  • quality of life
  • workforce development/training

The Program Committee welcomes session proposals from qualified speakers for all three areas. Please use our online submission form to submit your proposal by the May 1st deadline. The Committee also welcomes suggestions for session topics and feedback on what would interest prospective attendees.

We appreciate your support for the 2009 IGDA Leadership Forum!

- Heather Chandler
Conference Chair, 2009 IGDA Leadership Forum
Chair, IGDA Production SIG
Executive Producer, Media Sunshine

DVD and Free Web Videos

Posted by JasonDellaRocca on January 27th, 2009

Finally, the recorded content from the 2008 Leadership Forum is now available in two flavors:

DVD

28 conference sessions were recorded and are now available for purchase on DVD. The 5-disc set of hi-res video is priced at $99 (plus shipping). If you would like to purchase a copy, please email us via sales[at]igda.org and we’ll forward you the order form. (Copies of the 2007 Leadership Forum DVD are still available as well.)

Free Web Videos

You can watch the freely available lo-res videos hosted at Google Video, all linked via the “context index” page (just click on the speaker photos or “video” links for each session).

Slides/Summaries/etc for All Sessions

Posted by JasonDellaRocca on December 16th, 2008

A new “content index” page has been posted. This page now includes links to each session’s slides, summary/notes, speaker photo and bio, and session description.

The videos are still in post-production, and will be added to the index page soon in the new year.