With brand new leadership for the department and most of the event team lost to new career prospects we debated for a long time whether to even do an event this year or not. When we finally decided to go forward but axe the awesome-but-crazy Awards show from the last couple of years, we left ourselves with precious little time to find a new concept. Let alone to execute it!
So right of the bat let us say this: Gotland Game Conference would not have happened if it weren’t for some tremendously helpful friends of ours: Bonnie Ruberg, Scott Jon Siegel and Ernest W. Adams was the first to step up and offer their support. Johannes Wadin did us a tremendous service helping out with managing the jury, which was composed of 32 industry experts (and all around excellent people), volunteering their valuable time and knowledge for our students benefit.
Thanks to a lot of help from a lot of people, this worked out well!
Thank you all!
… and extra special sauce to Linda Kiby and Richard Dansky who both fed this poor event producer!
Though some solutions was definitively less-than-ideal (horizontal scrolling on the conference site, anyone? Scott?); the schedule was too tight and the conference too spread out – the plan went off without a hitch.
We realized that we’ve become too big to fit everything in 2 days – our poor jury had to work their way through more than 60 student projects and their presentations, and the students had to simultaneously staff the show floor and attend lectures. And for something called a conference there was perhaps not enough conferencing going on. But this was a problem with our plan and not with the execution, really. 😛
The four sessions we did have was absolutely excellent (again; Bonnie, Scott, Johannes – we love you!). But for next year well have more. And make sure that both Jurors and students can attend them all stress free.
Enough talk: here’s what you all been waiting for – photos! (courtesy of Mats Ek)
