This is my first post here on AltDevBlogADay, and I am both blessed and honored to bring you some potentially industry changing information. This has been almost a week in the making. I was hoping for a solidified logo to post with this report, but one has not been firmly decided on as of the date of publishing this article. The information is more than good enough to speak for itself. With no further gilding the lily, I give you the future of game dev conferences. I give you #AltDevConf! – JPH
There is quite a buzz around the #AltDevBlogADay e-mail feed. It all began on the evening of Tuesday October 4th 2011. Wolfgang Engel kicked off the commotion by stating the following.
“How about we organize an online conference for game developers. We take a weekend and use webinar.”
This, naturally, started a burning desire in all of the correspondents, myself included! Mass visions of linking the laptop to a 50” LCD and watching a convention in HD is a most awesome way to spend a weekend.
My only concern is the plausibility of this coming to fruition. This concern was laid to rest very quickly. A great many of our contributors to the blog should and would be very willing to contribute to the convention itself. This was made proof positive after Mike Acton made the following comment.
“My GDC proposal was rejected today. So I can do that one.”
This started a deluge of posters who also had great GDC ideas that were refused.
#AltDevConf will begin taking proposals for the up and coming Online based conference beginning on 10th of October 2011. The deadline for the submissions is the 23rd of October 2011. You can view a full layout for the event here, as published by Wolfgang, the originator himself.
If I were to tell you all that this has caused a stir in the AltDevBlogADay mailing list, I would be lying. This is going to be huge, so, my fellow devs and devettes do NOT miss the opportunity to attend a conference from the comfort of your own homes and offices. There will be several tracks covering art, design, development and maybe even publishing! Get in line for the February 12th 2012 start date that will change the way we share industry research, innovation and ingenuity.
The only unfortunate side will be the lack of face time with the big wigs. Networking and socializing will be limited to chat and twitter, but this should still provide excellent opportunities for everyone to at least become familiar with concepts and names. Of course, there should also be some sort of moderation as well, to ensure that chat doesn’t become a spam-fest like the like E3 coverage.
**AUTHOR’S NOTE** The group organizing this event wishes to ensure that the public is aware that this is a conference for game developers hosted on a website. While there will be some online gaming oriented content, this focus of the conference is gaming in general. I repeat, this is not an Online Gaming Conference, but a Gaming Conference hosted Online. (The URL for the link above leads to this address: /?p=18224&shareadraft=baba18224_4e91c7cd76c81) Thank you.
I also apologize that this is so short, but I want you to see this as it unfolds, not as a review in March after the fact!