So I arrived a little late to the party today but I still managed to attend two of the round table discussions and a bit of the reception. Details on my visit after the jump.

The first round table I attended involved the MMO, Kaneva. This discussion was led by Greg Frame and Jon Hanna. The discussion covered user created content such as shirts and furniture. It also brought on the idea of user made dance clubs. Kaneva hopes to seperate itself from other social MMO’s by including an objective driven world similar to Gaming MMO’s yet still incorporating the social business capabilities of current soicial games like Second Life. It was a good discussion and I have a few questions for the guys over at Kaneva that I will either ask tomorrow or email to them.

The second round table I went to had Lynn Barrett as well as my friend Asante Bradford. Lynn is SCAD Atlanta’s Career Services Manager, and Asante is the Digital Entertainment Liaison for the Georgia Film, Video and Music division of the Georgia Dept. of Economic Development (yeah!). Lynn actually was wearing her Soapbox Studios Temporary Tattoo today, which I found quite amusing since she didn’t know I’d be at GDX. Asante and Lynn discussed how Georgia is making a conscious effort to attract game companies from other markets and also help our current game companies businesses flourish. Asante informed the rest of the audience about House Bill 1100 and Lynn went on to tell them about other possible sources for internships.

At this point I actually was able to throw in some more input on getting, maintaining, and making the most out of internships. Being one of the two people in the audience that wasn’t a current SCAD
student I was able to contribute to the discussion like I were another panelist. Good times.

Kevin O’Gorman from the GGDA was also around to throw in some info about SIEGE and to talk a little bit about Georgia’s casino game manufacturers. I’ll be sure to post some more about them as I gather more info.

Afterwards I went with Asante to the reception and met some more very cool people who I will hopefully work with in the near future. I also talked to Kevin a bit about strengthening the audio side of the GGDA. I think we’re going to see some very positive movement for Georgia’s Game Audio community in the next year or so.

All in all it was a good opening day. I’ll have more to report tomorrow and I’m bringing the camera so I’ll have some pictures for tomorrow’s post. Till then, Juan out.

posted by Juan Baez III on 04.11.08 @ 1:49 am

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