Damn I can't beleive I'll be in Cali in just three days time. Isn't it amazing how these things seem to rush up all of the sudden? Two weeks ago it felt like a month away, five days ago it felt like a week away, and now it feels like tomorrow!
So I'm pretty much locked and loaded. My schedule is nailed down, although I'll probably end up picking up a few product interviews during the Expo. Based on my postmortem from last year I've created the IGF coverage page now, so that plugs a big gaping hole I identified in my coverage last year. Picked up my BES biz cards from Kinko's on Tuesday, using the same GDNet ones from yesteryear and GI is shipping me some new ones - hope they arrive in time, haha. Experience is everything and so I feel more prepared for this conference than ever. As with last year, I'm looking to use the full range of reporting resources to share my experience at the conference. That means linking from my blog to my articles to my gallery pics to news items and to off-site material.
I spent a bit today looking at Gamasutra's coverage of last year's conference. I had never viewed their coverage before but it had come up for a short while among us covering this year that Gamasutra was planning a live coverage of the event this year. I'm interested to see how well they pull it off, since that's pretty much the only advantage they have over us as far as I'm concerned. Their photo gallery had like a measly 30 pics in it, which is about as many as I post per day, not to mention my fellow staffers. They gave good reports on sessions but the coverage was really scattered whereas we have people, like Kelly Murdock with Visual Art, dedicated to a single track or two. I think also that the inclusion of the blogs in last year's coverage really sparked things up - I know I had a lot of fun and it was great to be able to seperate the official reporting of sessions and events and the personal reporting of parties and every-day conference activities, unlike previous years where it was all jumbled together and so you had to pick through to get to the actual conference material.
So despite Gamasutra's live coverage attempt, we're still the #1 spot for GDC coverage, and we're looking to make this year's all the better! Our coverage will officially kick off on Monday morning, 7am PST as we ready for the first day of tutorials. But of course I'll be there early Sunday afternoon, so my coverage begins then. I plan on taking the light rail over to the convention center to check out the changes to the convention center prior to the conference, so expect the pics to start rolling in later that afternoon [smile] After that all the staffers are meeting up to wrap up our GDC planning - expect a first-ever GDC Preview report Monday morning detailing our plans for the entire week to kick us off.
This is probably the last you'll hear of me until Sunday, so see you all when I get to Cali! Get pumped!
