Chapter Meeting: January 2002
Our first meeting of the year was both informative and thought provoking.
The Fort Lauderdale SIGGRAPH presentation which starts at 7:00 PM on
meeting night, consisted on demos from members who attend FAU's Center for
Electronic Communication (our hosts). Fine work...hard to believe these
are student works!
Around 7:45 the IGDA portion of the program started with a report from Tom
Buscaglia, Regional Coordinator. Tom welcomes the Chapter's newest board
member, Caleb R. Owens. The group then jumped right into a round table
discussion of the chapter's plans for the coming year.
Some of the issues covered were -
OUTREACH - Letting South Florida know we are here!!!
Developers - Continue our efforts to have everyone involved in game
development and related other businesses (3d production houses,
programers, web designers, animators, etc.) into our chapter.
Students - Presentations at all the regional Universities and colleges
through their Career Planning office to programing and art students who may
be interested in careers in Game development.
Business and Media - Plans for a local information EVENT at Billboard Live
on South Beach with the assistance of local PR wizard Seth
Gordon. Invitees will include community leaders, Venture capitalists and
business people. This event is in line with Florida 's 200 million dollar
Technology initiative and will introduce the IGDA chapter and the Game
Development industry to South Florida business and community leaders. We
intend to put South Florida on notice that we are building a Center for
Electronic Entertainment here and we want and expect there help.
LAN
A week end fund raiser - $$$ for the chapter and fun for all! We discussed
a possible location, pricing, staffing, network and power issues and even
insurance. Anyone available to volunteer please post so we can put
together a nice list of sucke....err...I mean volunteers!
PROGRAMS
Of course, our search for compelling and informative programs was
discussed, with several members suggesting new and intriguing possibilities.
Speaking of programs...(nice segway huh?) The Round Table presentation the
Tom Buscaglia is preparing for the GDC was the program...non traditional -
to say the least. No power point, no graphics, no code...just words and
thoughts to expand and stimulate the imagination. The topic...
The Phenomenology of Game Design - and it resulted in a lively discussion
that, at times, threatened to be profound! Tom described it as an exercise
in herding snakes...because of the elusive nature of the topic and the
tendency of those involved in the discussion to digress from the core
metaphysical issues into psychology, sociology and even anthropology! But
the end result was some time spent on thinking about the development
process from a completely different perspective. And that itself was well
worth the trip!
Til next month....
Tom Buscaglia
Chapter Coordinator
IGDA South Florida Chapter
