Talks and Conferences
I’m giving a talk at Full Sail this Friday, similar to the one I gave to UMD a few months ago. I’m fixing a few flow issues in the talk as well as adding a bunch of clarification and explanation, especially to the design pattern section of the talk, which can get very confusing as it currently stands. I will post the revised slides once I get back from Florida, so expect them around Monday.
Additionally, GDC is coming up in just two weeks, and I will definitely be there. Darius and I agree that GDC is definitely the best week of the year (at least professionally). I always learn a ton going to GDC, though not necessarily from the talks (the two day tutorials excepted). The talks are there (at least for me) to give me a few things:
- A broad overview of a topic I am completely unfamiliar with, and I don’t expect to leave these talks with ability to actually implement them. The talks on rapid prototyping, test driven development and agile project management were those for me last year.
- A set of pointers explaining how I can do something I already do better. Microsoft’s talks on concurrency and memory management were that for me last year.
- A broad understanding of the state of the industry and where it’s going in the future. EGW (in some respects), talks from big console developers and middleware providers, the Burning Down the House sessions, and just the general atmosphere are those talks for me.
Certainly there are other talks that don’t fit in to these categories, but this is generally how I divide up GDC.
I think though, that where GDC really shines is the ability to hang out with other professionals. Just by sitting around and talking to other developers about their development problems, there’s kind of this knowledge osmosis that occurs, and it’s totally worth going just for this (if you can afford the pass, or are lucky enough to speak). Hopefully I’ll be able to meet some of you (the few that I haven’t already) there. Be sure to leave a comment and let me know you’re going. It’s going to be a great week!
