Monday and Tuesday Recap

First of all I really do not enjoy flying, especially when my flight is delayed which would lead to a missed connection causing me to half to switch flights and fly across the country with no guarantee I will ever get to my destination. I was supposed to arrive in San Fran at 8:30, I got in some where around 2:30 am and they lost my luggage. So that meant my first day at GCD was spent in the clothes I had both flown and slept in. But despite all that they first day went well. It started of with a keynote by Square Enix's chief strategist about Squares move into serious games. I cannot tell you how excited about this I am. Having a major company involved in the community will add so much legitimacy to our cause. Squares first serious game is a game teaching how to make games. Its cute, and I would buy it, although they haven't announced whether it will be solely in house or commercial. I also caught Tim Holt's session on MMP (massively multi player) games for serious games, and got a few new names to look into like club penguin, Whyville, and Habbo hotel. I went to Alicia's talk on research questions that the serious games community should be looking into. I also attended Peter Smiths talk on Serious games applications of next generation technology. I attended the Serious Games Reception monday night, met some cool people, like the aforementioned Square Strategist , Ian Bogost from Ga Tech, Roger Smith from the army, Randy King from PEO STRI, Perry McDowell from NPS, Doug Whatel from Breakaway, Mike Zyda from GamePipe and Michelle Roper from Federation of american scientists. Jan Cannon-Bowers was there to help introduce me to people and show me off.

Tuesday I attended Ian Bogost's persuasive games lecture and the Serious games top 10 things we want from industry lecture. I also attended the IGDA party and met Eitan from MIT comparative media lab, Daniel Vogel from Epic Games, Katherine Wynman from Devry. I also attended the Second life party as a VIP. There I met Time Langdell from National University, Kenneth Yeast from 7 studios, and Philip Tan from MIT comparative media lab.

I also had time during all this fun and networking to pick up some schwag for myself, my roommate, my undergrads and my team at work.

Tomorrow the Expo hall opens tomorrow so alot of networking and schwagging will be done, in addition I am meeting with Katherine Wynman to talk about a possible partnership with UCF IST.