Lots of news sites and blogs have reported that the recession has affected GDC this year, with lot of cancelled parties and a big drop in attendees. I wouldn’t be surprised, given all the redundancies (although … wouldn’t that mean more people looking to recruit / be recruited?), but the first round of evidence – the volume of parties – shows no signs of recession so far:
NB: each conference, I run a private shared calendar for friends and colleagues, with the two rules being: you’re either a friend already who I can trust, or you tell me a party you know about but I didn’t … AND: you only apply to RSVP/invite-only parties that you’re generally interested in (so you don’t get anyone else in trouble for crashing a party and making them look bad with their boss / contacts).
That’s why I’m not hotlinking these here – some of them are very small affairs and don’t want to be inundated with 3,000 GDC attendees. Those that aren’t small … you can usually google them quickly and easily.
Sun Mar 22 | |
---|---|
6pm – 11pm | Flash gaming party |
6pm – 12am | GDC kick off | Mon Mar 23 |
6pm – 8pm | Casual Games Summit Reception | Tue Mar 24 |
4:30pm – 8:30pm | Canadian Consulate |
5pm – 8pm | Accel Partners |
5:30pm – 11pm | Outspark |
7pm – 11pm | ISM Charity Poker |
8pm – 11pm | UK partnerships + funding |
8pm – 11pm | Harmonix |
8pm – 1am | IGDA party |
9pm – 12am | GameAIdev.com launch |
9pm – 12am | Minna Mingle |
Wed Mar 25 | |
1:15pm – 2:15pm | IGDA VIP Lunch |
4:30pm – 6pm | Booth Crawl |
5pm – 9pm | Valve |
5pm – 9pm | F2P Forum |
6pm – 8pm | Tweetup |
6pm – 9pm | IASIG Pro Audio |
6pm – 10pm | Sony |
6:30pm – 9pm | Women in Gaming |
6:30pm – 9:30pm | “Write Club” (Writing SIG) |
7pm – 9pm | PlayStation Blog |
7pm – 12am | TriplePoint |
10pm – 12am | 007 Party |
Thu Mar 26 | |
6pm – 9pm | Gamespy |
7pm – 10pm | Darkstar Community meetup |
8pm – 10pm | GDC World Mixer |
8pm – 10:30pm | GANG awards |
8pm – 11pm | GDC Speakers |
8:30pm – 10pm | Indie games party |
NB: if you’re the organizer of any of those and want me to link it somewhere / provide contact info, let me know. If you’re an organizer of some party NOT on that list, and want it listed and hot-linked, again – let me know. I’d be happy to add it here for you.