GASIG Meeting 30-August-2005
International Game Developers Association
[edit] Introduction
Michelle Hinn (chair), Reid Kimball, Barrie Ellis, Tim Chase
[edit] Meeting Summary
Due to low attendance during the recent months, we have decided to approach our meetings in a different way from this point forward in order to maximize participation in the SIG overall. The consensus was that we (1) reduce meetings to once a month unless there is a need to meet more often (i.e., an upcoming project deadline that needs more attention, (2) give active SIG members access to post on the SIG website/blog, (3) keep track of projects on the SIG wiki and notify the SIG mailing list when major changes have been made (see GASIG Projects for more information)
[edit] Extended Summary
Meeting Times: Meeting times in the future will be moved back to Mondays at 11am US ET. This is due to the difficulties in having a late meeting for those in Europe. We'll aim for holding them on the first monday of each month. A "to do" item for the SIG will be creating a SIG calendar so that people know more about upcoming project due dates and meeting times and dates.
SIG Mailing List: There have been issues with listserv postings. Michelle Hinn who is the listserv moderator will check into the situation. The suspect cause is different user permissions. Also of issue may be the spam filter but at this point it seems to be less likely since Michelle receives a copy of deleted spam to the list.
Website issues: Michelle has had difficulty getting in touch with the IGDA volunteer who has been assigned to work on the site. However she has had several computer crashes of late and it's quite possible some email activity has been lost. She will check on that. Meeting attendees suggested that we should increase our efforts and maintaining a more dynamic site so several active members of the SIG will be granted permissions to post to the blog that is the main part of the site.
WIKI: In between meetings, members will post information pertaining to project status to the SIG wiki site. This, hopefully, will serve to keep people informed about what is being done, what needs to be done, and allow us to delegate assignments in a more fair manner. Posting more detailed information to the wiki will also serve to keep down large volumes of traffic on the mailing list. When major projects need commenting on, members will direct members of the list to the wiki page that the project is on. This way projects will be "in progress" and will have a common editing space that will avoid having to assign someone to keep up with conversation threads via email in order to product a draft project. On the wiki, projects will be drafted collaboratively.
SIG visibility: While the SIG hopes that GDC will be a great way to get more traffic to the SIG, we realize that we need to remain organized and keep our projects visible to the public on our website as much as possible. We hope that the changes in SIG operations will help projects keep moving and allow members to point directly to resources that have been completed or could use more volunteer help (i.e., use our project list as a way to help recruit more SIG members).
To Do List: This will be a new site on the wiki. Michelle Hinn is in charge of the initial layout of the list called GASIG Projects. Reid Kimball is currently working on a gamers with disabilities survey. Tim Chase is in charge of working out a SIG "Top Ten" things to increase game accessibility to hand out at the GDC. Barrie Ellis will be helping with GDC 2006 planning.
Funniest Moment of the Meeting: "Statues" will be erected in our honor by our publisher. Michelle Hinn is checking on the status.
