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

[Henry E Lowood]

Andrew, you are right about the site, of course, and the present IGDA team will totally acknowledge it.  There was some discussion about ditching the website and rebuilding from scratch, but there are problems with that, as not all chapters and SIGs are in the same situation.  The best tack is to be in touch, as you suggest, and to go form there.  Gordon says at this point he will try to "underpromise and overdeliver."

Henry

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Armstrong" <andrew at aarmstrong.org>
To: "IGDA Game Preservation SIG" <game_preservation at igda.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 2, 2011 3:08:45 AM
Subject: Re: [game_preservation] Some notes from today's IGDA heads meeting


Glad you got the grant! Huzzah! I'd be happy to help formalise the fact we have the 4 of us doing stuff with you as the SIG chair. If I thought it was necessary to do so before I'd have mentioned it. If it means doing elections, we'll see if anyone is interested in becoming committee members I guess? Tell me off list where you want to go with that. 

I gave up on monthly roundups because the site was just hard to use (and we're too low activity for it to be worth it). Took more effort then it was worth. I can reintroduce these with weekly discussion topics if people want them. 

On the website: I'm glad they're speaking about this but I'd rather like to see action; facilitating Facebook and Twitter isn't in my view very useful for any of the SIG's...they need to either properly sort the website or write it off with a proper new website, not the problematic attempted I tried to beta test (at least this isn't as bad as the first attempt at a new website which simply didn't work). Basically without someone as dedicated and technically minded as Jason we've been stuck with a absolutely bag of rubbish for years now. 

I will contact them again over the website and raise the list of issues I originally did years ago now; will be funny forwarding them that with the replies saying they'll be looking at it shortly. My response that I'd be happy to help was helpfully ignored too; yes, I would spend my own time figuring out the site then fixing things if they allowed it. 

Andrew 

On 02/03/2011 06:08, Henry Lowood wrote: 

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 



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Henry Lowood
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     Film & Media Collections
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