Our 04/14/2009 Meeting was one of our best yet, with 20 members on hand to pick the brain of veteran media executive Al Meyers. The meeting started with Al Meyers TED video, which can be seen after the break along with the slides from the meeting. The conversation ranged across numerous topics associated with Al’s experiences from Gametap to his recent ReinventED efforts. The issue of diversity amongst game developers came up at one point as well, as all involved discussed some of those aspects of the videogame industry that tends to keep certain demographics away. The event also managed to bring in five new attendees in addition to the usual group of developers.

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Our speaker is:
Al Meyer, formerly a Turner Senior Strategy Executive, one of the founding members of Gametap, and now the CEO and Co-Founder of ReinventED Technologies. Al is also President of Saisei Consulting, which provides strategy and business development advisory services to digital media companies. Saisei’s objectives are to help early-stage and established digital media companies develop successful strategies within the United States and around the world. This includes: video games, virtual worlds, social networks, and other digital media applications. Al will begin by showing a video clip talking about his most recent ventures with ReinventED, but is interested in chatting about any of his previous work as well. In helping lead the video game strategy at Turner Broadcasting, Al spent a great deal of time working in Asia with online game publishers and developers, and became deeply immersed in the video game industry. As a strategist at Turner, Meyers was one of a team of senior executives that were responsible for identifying, evaluating and developing strategic business opportunities related to existing businesses and proposed ventures across the company’s domestic and international entertainment, animation, news and sports portfolio.

Remember, the meeting time will be at 6:30PM, Tuesday 04/14, The Pub at Gameday.

We’re back at The Pub at Gameday next week for a GGDA/IGDA Athens Chapter meeting. If you have yet to attend a GGDA meeting, The Pub at Gameday is located at: 251 West Clayton St, Athens, GA 30601. Why back at the pub? Because I’m hoping to have a guest speaker for us and though the NMI is conducive to working, they’re interested in chatting. If you have agenda items for the meeting, let me know at casey.odonnell@ggda.org.

The event will commence at 6:30PM, Tuesday, April 14.

I’ll post more info on our speaker once I have full confirmation.

Hey everyone. We’re having our first post-GGJ meeting! I’d like for us to talk about what the next steps for Ursula and Olly are. The meeting will take place in Room 412 of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Com. This is the New Media Institute Lab/Meeting room (you GGJers know it well). See you there!

The Athens Site for the Global Game Jam went off superbly. It was 48 hours of craziness. The majority of the event was captured on video, which you can watch in its near entirety from ustream.tv if you’re into that kind of thing. I don’t recommend it. The event was, as expected, 90% boring for viewers and likely 10% sheer terror/chaos. The game that was created was ultimately broken due to time and engineering limitations, but if you look more closely at what was developed, it is exceptional for 48 hours. “Escape from Ralph’s Seafooditorium with Ursula and Olly,” contains a significant amount of work that was just shy of playable. Even as it stands, things like automatic level loading, sound, music, and art are all exceptional. With a little time and love from the part of those involved, I have no doubt that we will see more of Ursula and Olly. I know that the developers are already intent on flushing out an actual version 1.0 of the game, a process I will certainly also participate in.

Over the next several weeks and months, those participants at the Athens GGJ plan to continue development, moving meetings from The Pub at Gameday to the New Media Institute at UGA, where they can continue development. In the mean time I need to get to updating the SVN repository so our start/end and new beginnings are marked. Design work continues over at the UGA Gamelab Wiki. Game on Jammers!

The next Athens Chapter GGDA Meeting will be 01/27/2009 at The Pub at Gameday at 6PM. For those that have not yet attended a meeting, The Pub at Gameday is located at: 251 West Clayton St, Athens, GA 30601.

The primary goal is to ensure that any late-comers interesting in the GGJ can get registered and into the loop. Any engineers interested in talking about engine stuff, I would like to do that this meeting as well. We can also do any last minute brainstorming we like. If you feel like you are ready to go and happy to show up at 4PM on Friday 01/30, then don’t feel like you have to be at this meeting. Of course you can have a beer with everyone that does show up.

Hey GGDA members! We’re meeting again, Tuesday, January 20th at The Pub at Gamedayat 6PM. We’re doing a bit more Global Game Jam brainstorming. If you want more information or just feel like chatting with me, please feel free to send email to casey.odonnell@ggda.org.

This will the the last chance to register for the Athens Global Game Jam. I have to have a headcount so that there will be accomodations to those that show up. Please feel free to bring a friend if you know they’ll show up on January 30th through February 1st.

Tuesday night’s meeting was such a success that we’ve decided to schedule another pre-Global Game Jam meeting for next Tuesday (01/20/2009) as well. The meeting will be held again at The Pub at Gameday from 6PM until when it finishes.

This week we had several new attendees, several of whom have already committed to the GGJ Athens event. I’ll begin posting more information on the Athens Jam over the next couple of days and after our meeting on the 20th.

Next weeks efforts will center on bringing together pieces that will be useful for all involved prior to the Global Game Jam. This means thinking about the kinds of art assets that will be necessary, tool chains, and other elements that will make jamming more productive.

I’d like to thank everyone who came on Tuesday and made the meeting such a success. It has been a pleasure to be the GGDA/IGDA chapter president thus far.

All you Athens GGDA members anxiously awaiting our pre-Global Game Jam meeting need to look no further. We are meeting tomorrow (January 13, 2009) at The Pub at Gameday at 6PM. We are going to be discussing some of the different possible tool-chains and ideas for the GGJ. The event is only a few weeks away, so this will be a chance to collaborate before the event. I need firm commitments from anyone interested in participating. Please either come to the meeting or shoot me an email at casey.odonnell@ggda.org. We’ll be discussing logistics and technology. Please bring anyone you know who would like to participate, but perhaps is not a member of the GGDA Forum/List.

This will also be a chance to get yourself registered to use some of the electronic resources that have been made available to GGDA members. Things such as the Wiki, Forum, and Blog are all available to members.

If you have yet to attend a GGDA meeting, The Pub at Gameday is located at: 251 West Clayton St, Athens, GA 30601.

See you there!

We’re slowly getting the virtual/digital presence of the Athens (Georgia/International) Game Developers Association (GGDA/IGDA) Chapter up and running. Bear with me through this process.