GDC 2006

Well, that was an interesting GDC for sure. Take one part San Jose, one part company demo/deadline, two parts moving, and mix it with a healthy dose of GDC lecture. Bake it for a week and you have this year’s crazy schedule.

We’d been working on an internal Lair deadline that dragged into the wee hours of the GDC week, so when I arrived in San Jose on Wednesday morning I’d only had 8 hours of sleep for the last three days. Oh, and my talk – the talk that I had started mid-January to avoid any GDC stress – that talk wasn’t finished yet. I spent most of Wednesday in my hotel room – sleeping, working on the lecture and enjoying Victoria’s company, who had come down for emotional support.

The lecture was on Thursday morning, and it went over really well. The talk description hadn’t made it into the conference schedule (not even the white sheet addendum they add to the bags!) and I was worried that not many people would come. I mean, would you get to the show at 9 in the morning for something you didn’t even know existed? But surprisingly I had a full house and people had to be turned away at the door. Okay, it was a small room. But it’s still a nice feeling to have. I showed two Lair demos on my PS3 devkit and looked at various production assets in detail, fielded questions and even managed to finish on time (that’s a first for me!). From what I hear the feedback has been very positive, and Softimage seemed to be happy with it, as well.
After the talk Victoria and I drove back to Sonoma to move in some of her stuff because Vicky’s dad had come down to bring/hook up the washer and dryer. I unloaded some boxes, stopped by my (soon to be old) apartment to take care of the birds and drove back to San Jose for some…uhm, sophisticated GDC partying. Level 99 was fun, got to talk to some interesting people and got to catch up with my old boss, Bob Bates. Me and a bunch of F5 people tried to go to Bioware/Pandemic’s event next, but apparently the line to get in went around the corner of the building, and that didn’t seem to be worth it. We went straight to the GDC suite instead for more beer and socializing. I think I got back to my hotel room around 4 in the morning. Details are sketchy

On Friday I got up early to catch (most of) Clint Hocking’s talk (after all I’d gotten used to the 4 hour sleep thing), quickly walked the show floor to meet up with some (but not all) vendors I wanted to visit, and left San Jose early to drive back to Sonoma. More moving. We’ve started with my apartment today. I’ll hopefully have some pictures of the new house soon!

All in all not a bad GDC, but I’ll be damned if this wasn’t some of the most stressful time of my life. I met my share of cool people and got to see some cool stuff, but only managed to attend two sessions. Next year will have to be a lot less stressful again!