@ GDC 2009
I’m in San Francisco all week attending the 2009 Game Developers Conference with my company, GameSpy. GDC is the game industry’s big trade show of the year (at least among the industry itself — the far more famous E3 Expo is much more tailored toward impressing retailers and generating buzz with consumers), where the people who make games get together to talk tech, make deals, network and even learn (it really IS a conference — there are dozens of sessions each day on everything from building games to high level emerging concepts on the development & business fronts). And because we develop technology for people who build games, it’s our big show of the year too. We have a ginourmous booth in one of the convention halls, we throw a swanky party, and we take on somewhere between 30 and 50 client meetings over the course of 3 days. We also use the show to announce some of our big projects / deals — of which we usually have 3-4. So, it’s a big week for me and my colleagues! Prepping for it has had me stressed out, exhausted and cranky for the last few weeks — but now that the show’s here, I’m fairly psyched.
As the Senior Product Manager for the division, I’m somewhat in the eye of all of this, coordinating (and sometimes writing drafts of) press releases, getting the word out on our Website, making sure our product and account management teams have their messaging down, even soliciting designs for our annual t-shirt. Oh, and I usually get tasked with making the playlist for the aforementioned “swanky party” (no, I never miss a chance to impose my music snobbery on others). We’re also in the middle of launching a new product, which we’ll officially announce tomorrow. On Wednesday, we start alternating between non-stop talking and drinking — which will inevitably conclude with me curled into a ball in my airplane seat Friday night as I head home.
Nothing much else to say here, other than: other than running and hangin’ with the wife, that’s pretty much what I’ve been up to lately. I get a lot of “what exactly do you do” questions from friends and family, so I thought I’d share small slice of that.
I’ll be Twittering randomly as the week unfolds — so, if you’re looking for up-to-the-minute updates on where I’m at, what I’m up to, and how close I am to cracking, that’s a good way to track me.
