Paris Game AI Conference
by Stefan Maton

Conclusion

This is the second time the event has been held and it surely was a great experience assisting it. Last year's event only lasted one day and the move to making it a two day event really is beneficial to it. There's more of everything: more people, more lectures, more interesting discussions. The coffee breaks are used to talk about the previous sessions, and more than once you get the chance to exchange business cards or just shake hands with one or the other known name in the business. Although I've been myself in the gaming industry for almost 13 years now, I'm still impressed when I meet people having a real influence to the gaming industry, both from the technical and the game design point of view.

The VIP evening was well visited. I'd say that about 60 people were attending a relaxed small-talk event in a nice bar called "Chez Claude". If you wonder what typically small-talk topics for AI developers might look like, here are the ones I chatted about that evening: C#, Java and C++ and the programmers difficulties to transit smoothly from one language to another; Camera movement and direction using HTN planners; Difficulties to develop and distribute for IPhones; Human-machine interfaces such as direct brain plugs and brain firewalls; etc. etc. etc. As you can see, even though this was an relaxed evening we programmers aren't able to not talk about something that isn't remotely related to AI.

If there would be anything I'd like to see changed it's the time given to any speaker. Currently it's 45 minutes including the Q&A session. Although this is "standard speaker time", I'd like to see this extended to 1h or 45 minutes of speech plus 15 minutes Q&A. Every so often we ran out of time: Either the speaker could not finish his talk and Alex had to ask him to hurry, or the Q&A session had to be cut. Giving more time to the participants would give more time to the attendees to interact with the speakers, and thus get a better understanding of the topic on hand.

I'm already looking forward to next year's iteration of this event with (hopefully) a similar impressive, high quality line-up of speeches.

Contents

	Introduction & ToC
	Page 1
	Page 2
	Page 3
	Page 4
	Page 5
	Conclusion

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