GDC Recovery nearly at 100%

I didn't even throw wild parties until all hours of the day and night like some people and I'm still having to recover  from last week in San Francisco. Not normally being an overtly social person, GDC can be rather exhausting.

I'd say the conference was fantastic, but that would be misleading. I'm sure the conference was fantastic, but I missed most of it. For me, the people were fantastic. I spent most of my time meeting folks in person that I had previously only known electronically. And, of course, I tried to meet as many new people as I could. As I recommended to a few people, if you have to choose between socializing and attending a session at GDC, do the socializing. You can always grab slides or watch shakycam footage on Youtube later, but adding someone to your network or just plain interacting with another professional on a personal level is something you really shouldn't pass up.

I did get to learn some neat things at a few sessions. Onlive continues to impress me as a service, so much so that I'm surprised they don't have noteworthy competition in that space yet. Imagine needing to have a new license for Motion Builder but you only need it for a few weeks. Rent a license for a few days where the app itself is running on a server somewhere and you're just interacting with it locally. Costs a fraction of the full price and you don't need a powerful machine because the horsepower is cloud-based. That's not available yet, but I bet it's coming.

Chuck Hoover delivered such an intriguing talk on Faulty Thinking that I'm no longer sure of much of anything. Thanks, Chuck. Thanks a lot.

The annual IGDA meeting was engaging but lightly attended (get on the stick next year, members). The board members put actions behind their words by instigating the formation of a Freelancers SIG during the meeting. Elapsed time from someone broaching the topic to SIG creation: approximately 4 minutes. If you're not sure why you should join the IGDA or what it does for you as a member, ping me.

I'll plug it better with a full post later, but I thoroughly enjoyed the Scrum Master certification course I attended on Monday and Tuesday. Pardon my use of the vernacular, but Clinton Keith is the fecal matter. I apologize to my more erudite readers for going all guttersnipe on your posterior, yo.

To all my friends and colleagues, new and otherwise, thanks for taking the time to meet up. I'm still powering through my stack of business cards, so if you haven't received an email from me yet, you will. Just give me a few days.