More Tantalizing V5 Info
So didja know that we're planning to have a V5 demo in two months? TWO MONTHS!! Yea, things are a little bit crazy around here, made moreso by the fact that we're trying to coincide with the biggest industry event in the world (GDC). So not only are we swamped with our usual GDC prep work, we have to make sure there's something worth showing to people at the show! Heck, I completely forgot about the IGF interviews I've been doing for the past 8 years until about a week ago. As in they did not cross my mind once until then. I'm obviously at some sort of capacity load!
Anyways, we've been trying to poke Superpig into blogging some more, but dangit all he's just too busy! However he should be popping out from his cave in a bit, for a bit, to talk more about the slick new UI you'll be presented with for navigating through your V5 content.
Note that I said "your content" - this is a very important distinction to make going into V5. The site will become much more of a repository for you to use to collect knowledge that is relevant to you in order to make learning things and tracking new techniques a lot easier - whether they be articles, blog posts, forum threads, off-site links...
And that's another thing. "Articles" will become a much more fluid concept. We won't be publishing other people's work anymore the way that we do now. That concept worked really well back when the site was first founded, and a lot of people didn't know how to post content online, or those that did didn't have the time to take the effort to do so. It was much easier for them to send us a Word document to format and post for them.
However nowadays everyone's used to blogging, whether they own their own webspace with a blog or have created an account at Wordpress or Blogger. With V5, you'll be able to publish your own content to the site, whether it's from your own blog or from a Journal here on the site. This will bring in a ton of content from all over the interwebs, and our job then instead of posting it will be to bring to your attention the stuff that is worthy of your reading time.
We will still publish articles, but they will mainly be editorial peices or event coverage - stuff directly from us on the staff.
For our dedicated Mod team we plan to have stuff uploaded to play around with early next month, but it's not too much longer after that for the rest of you!
Speaking of GDC...
We're going to have a booth on the Expo floor again this year, so please do swing by and say hello! You'll also want to come by not only to see V5 in action but to pick up a limited-quantity GDNet coffee mug. Hopefully we'll be better placed than the corner we were shifted to at the last minute in 2009. We may also have some extra mini frisbees to throw around at our neighbors. Either way it'll be good times as always.
New site partner: Events For Gamers
We're beginning to trade traffic with industry event website Events for Gamers, a relationship that will continue to grow once V5 has arrived and we are able to more fully integrate the two websites. One of the things we're doing with V5 is allowing effort for certain parts of GDNet to be focused off-site at locations built specifically for such purposes, and E4G will cover our current Events Calendar. This will bring together a network of development-related websites (hence bringing back more meaning to our .net domain) all right at your fingertips with GDNet at the hub.
Currently with E4G we have created a new forum where you can go to discuss various local/worldwide events. Right now there's only Triangle Games Conference and GDC (two that I plan to attend), but you can request a thread to be started for any conference you plan on attending. We have it set up this way so that all conversation is located in one place per event. Use this forum to find out who else is attending, organize car pools, book room shares, etc.
With V5 you'll be able to see a list of GDNet members attending an event, as well as other integrated feautures - we're just trying to get the ball rolling a bit early. If you're interested in helping out, E4G could use some Drupal developers - contact Mathew Anderson at mathew@eventsforgamers.com.
My travels for the first half of 2010
I'm going to be hopping around to several conferences between Feb and May, here's the full list:
Feb 16-17: Engage! Expo (NYC)
Mar 9-13: GDC (SF, CA)
Mar 26-28: PAX East (Boston, MA)
Apr 7-8: Triangle Games Conference (Raleigh, NC)
May 6-7: GDC Canada (Vancouver, BC)
May 10-13: LOGIN (Seattle, WA)
I'm especially excited for TGC and GDC Canada. For TGC I get to drive down, and there are some beautiful roadways (they call them skyways) I can take through the mountains of West Virginia. I also get to meet Radioactive Dan in person and race the Z against his Boxster [wink]. Then for GDC Canada, I've always wanted to visit Vancouver and it's also the city that hosts the TV series Stargate (in all incarnations) - I'm a big fan so paying homage will be great. Also, Vancouver is only a ~2-hour bus ride from Seattle, and I might even take the intervening weekend between GDC Canada and LOGIN to bicycle down or just rent a car and take a scenic route. Either way should be great!
If any of you will be at any of the events above, let me know!
