[game_preservation] Some notes from today's IGDA heads meeting

[Henry Lowood]

I will see a few of you tomorrow at the SIG Roundtable at GDC -- 
10.30-11.30am, 113 North Hall, which is in the usual underground hallway.

In the meantime, here are some notes from today's meeting of the IGDA 
SIG heads.  I'm leaving a lot out and just touching points that I think 
will interest somebody in the group, esp. Andrew (as a lot has to do 
with the tech environment for IGDA).  No pretense of style here, just 
bullet-points:

* The main speakers were Kate Edwards, who has worked on the 
localization SIG for some time, and Gordon Bellamy and Sheri Rubin of IGDA.
* If you all would like, we can formalize the "leadership" of this SIG 
as a steering committee.  So far, it's been informal with the center 
consisting of the folks who take responsibility for various aspects of 
the SIG: me, Devin, Andrew, and Melanie.  Apparently, there are 
guidelines and recommended practices if we want to be more formal about 
it.  Your call.
* At least two SIGs have gone to a "topic of the week" format as a way 
of (1) fostering discussion; (2) reminding people that they are in the 
SIG; and (3) prepping topics for a best practices white paper.  Note 
that (3) is one of our goals, so I wonder if anybody would be interested 
in leading a "topic of the week" (or every two weeks, or every month 
...) discussion.  That means prompting the discussion and possibly 
summarizing, if that's useful.
* As several of you know, I will be representing the SIG at PAX-East on 
a panel with folks from Library of Congress (David), Smithsonian (Chris 
M.), Joystiq (Chris G.), and I am 8-Bit (Jon Gibson -- not sure if Jon 
is in the SIG).   The goal is for this panel to re-launch the Digital 
Game Canon as a regular PAX event culminating a year-long process 
conducted via JoyStiq.
* Ryan Arndt is the community manager for IGDA.  He is available to 
encourage and support projects that cut across SIG lines.  A few years 
ago, we talked a little about the Preservation SIG working with a couple 
of the other groups on historical topics, e.g. Women in Games.  Anyway, 
Ryan is there as a resources if anyone wants to pick this up.
* Major point esp. for Andrew.  Gordon and Sheri totally admitted that 
the IGDA website is broken, dysfunctional, embarrassing, etc.  It's even 
a problem, say, when members try to enroll in mailing lists or whatever, 
which the website seems to be supporting, but of course it is not.   
Anyway, Gordon was apologetic and basically said SIGs should continue 
doing what they are doing, which in our case means keeping our mailing 
list, wiki, etc.   However, he also said (Andrew esp., I guess) Ryan or 
Andrew Leaf (who is trying to fix what he can) know about our needs.   
They would like to have an inventory of who is doing what where.
* Ideas for articles or publicity using the IGDA Newsletter?  Let 
cat at idga.org know.  (Cat Wendt, I believe)
* Gordon is, to say the least, energetic.  He reviewed his "road map" 
for the organization, and it involves a lot of partnerships and event 
connections.  The main take-away for us is the connection to PAX for the 
Digital Game Canon -- in fact, Gordon made a point of saying that our 
experience with GDC was a big part of his motivation for looking more 
closely at how IGDA could be present at PAX.   (The organization is 
sponsoring three days of activities at the con next week.)   Other such 
connections include SXSW, GamesCon, the upcoming IGDA Summit in Seattle, 
ACM/Siggraph, the Copenhagen meeting, etc.
* Fun fact from Gordon: 44% of game developers world-wide are in 
California.  Just thought I'd throw that in there ...
* SIG Grants are back, and the first to receive on in this round was ... 
the Game Preservation SIG!  We received a small grant to help fund David 
Gibson's trip to Boston to be on the Game Canon panel.  This was funded 
by the IGDA Foundation, which esp. supports education-related activities.
* Reminder: IGDA Board Elections.  Deadline for voting is 18 March.
* We should contact Ryan if we would like to use Facebook or Twitter 
groups for our SIG and integrate them somehow with our mailing list.  
Personally, I'm happy with the mailing list, but if somebody would like 
to pick up this ball and explore what we can do with Facebook or 
Twitter, let Ryan know.  (please cc: me)

I think those were the main points.  Given the incredible job Jason 
Della Rocca did running IGDA, I never thought he could be replaced, but 
Gordon is making a believer out of me.  The organization seems to be 
moving forward on a lot of fronts. He described the shift in leadership 
by analogy to Civilization, in terms of the transition from Monarchy to 
Republic to Democracy -- which is quite clever.

Best,

Henry


-- 
Henry Lowood
Curator, History of Science&  Technology Collections;
    Film&  Media Collections
HRG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall
650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu
http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood