The text of the email:

First of all… Thank you to everyone who came for the inaugural Athens GGDA/IGDA chapter meeting. The event was quite a success. We had 14 people in attendance with a broad variety of interests and areas of expertise. The conversation that followed the introductory presentation was excellent and I think everyone came away excited about the event. Publicity around the event was kept to strictly the GGDA announcement and word of mouth. This created an excellent situation where many of our attendees were GGDA members and interested/committed to the local chapter. We’ll begin scaling the events up as our chapter activities increase.

A special thanks also goes to the folks at The Pub at Gameday who hosted our event free of charge and allowed us to make liberal use of their large HDTVs for presentation and subsequent Wii gameplay. Not to mention the exceptional beer selection that should draw future attendees event without the draw of game development talk.

Also thanks to the folks at Hi-Rez (Michal Adam and Stew Chisam in particular) for providing Global Agenda Alpha Testing Invitations which were distributed to several attendees.

The opening presentation centered largely around the role that the GGDA and the IGDA play in encouraging game development efforts and other larger industry issues. It also focused on how small independent game development communities can thrive given the right support structures like the GGDA and IGDA. Several examples which I have been a part of in the past were talked about.

Slides can be found here (To advance click on the little white border… Yes, super annoying…).

Based on this initial meeting, I have begun setting up an Athens GGDA website, list-serve, and GameJam Wiki. We have also been officially included in the Global Game Jam which will be January 30th from 5PM until February 1st at 5PM. The event will be held in the New Media Institute at the University of Georgia. Several subsequent GameJams will be arranged that draw on concepts developed on the Athens GGDA GameJam Wiki.

All in all is was an excellent beginning for a local chapter and I thank everyone who took the time to participate.

I’ll be in touch with everyone as I get our virtual coordination tools online.

Best.
Casey

The launch meeting of the GGDA Athens Chapter will focus on letting interested members of the Athens community know about these efforts and the role that the GGDA and IGDA plays in assisting the efforts of members. Dr. Casey O’Donnell of the University of Georgia and President of the Athens Chapter will be updating attendees of his and UGA’s gaming related efforts as well as discussing what he hopes will be a new pocket of game development and innovation. It is also an opportunity to gauge interest in participation in the Global Game Jam events on January 30th

I will post photos and event notes here after the meeting. The slides have been posted as a SWF file here.

Post-event details will be posted here…

The first plenary session opened a bit slow, but I’ve decided that it had more to do with the frigid temperatures in the pavilion, rather than any particular fault of the speakers. Rich Taylor of the ESA, Asante Bradford (who also doubled as MC for the panel) of the GA Department of Economic Development, and Blake Lewin of Turner R&D brought together a panel that at first seemed a bit disjointed, but ultimately came together quite nicely.

I think ultimately it was Blake Lewin who hit the nail on the head. Though I’m not quoting him, he seemed to identify how particularly important the balance between the rights of users and developers/publishers is going to be to the future of the videogame industry. At several points the recording industry’s lack of capability to work within and around these changes brought laughs from the crowd. But really, it is just as important for the videogame industry, perhaps even more important.

I have to wonder that if the game industry does not tackle these big issues, DRM, Region Lockout, Format Wars, System Lock-in, and the list goes on, they’re not going to be able to meet the call that many are making, that games will characterize media for the next century just as radio and television characterized media in the previous century. It’s not a problem that is going to get solved here in Atlanta this weekend, but it’s going to be felt most acutely in places like this, where burgeoning industries are attempting to evolve.