We’re delighted to announce that in partnership with the University of Abertay, Dundee we will be offering a satellite site for the Launch Conference to be held in Birmingham on 21st and 22nd of November. Instead of traveling to Birmingham however, you’ll only need to go as far as the Hannah Maclure Centre in Dundee, where we’ll be showing the stream in the cinema live and for free on both days of the conference.
Launch is one of the premier conferences in the UK focusing on the business of making games. The agenda for the two day event is shaping up to be very impressive with a great lineup of well known speakers including UKIE’s Jo Twist, FourDoorLemon’s Simon Barratt, Remode’s Ella Romanos, Jagex’s Richard Murray and many more from around the UK.
Thursday 21st the overriding theme will be “Launch a Business, Launch a Product”, whilst on Friday 22nd the theme will be “Launch a career”. The Launch conference is also home of the Launch Awards, a prestigious chance to present your work, and we’ll be able to watch live as Best Portfolio, Best Startup and Best Product are selected.
We really hope that you’ll join us for this excellent opportunity to experience the Launch Conference without the travel expense. We’re grateful to Abertay for hosting and to Launch for the opportunity to provide this event. Make sure to register early as space in the HMC will be limited.
Abertay students will be receiving a different registration link, so watch your inboxes for this.
]]>Games developers, students and any other interested parties are all welcome to join us! Everyone is welcome! Simply RSVP on the IGDA Scotland Facebook page (and don’t forget to like us)
Even though the chapter is still in it’s early days, we’ve been at work to put an intriguing little program of presentations for you, all from the cities’ local talent and academia. We’ll be starting up at 7pm for a night of talks and all round IGDA banter.
From 8pm we’ll be hosting talks from Axis Animation (creators of the Dead Island trailer), Deep Pixel (authors of Unity Blueprints and newly founded games developers) and Glasgow Caledonian University (host of Scottish Game Jam).
We’ll be posting more details about our speakers coming soon, but suffice to say we’re really excited to have them here for our first ever meetup in Glasgow!
You can find the venue on the map here. (Sauchiehall Lane is under the arches of Watt Brothers off Sauchiehall Street)
Make sure you RSVP!
]]>83 developers, students, journalists, academics and other supporters filled the venue, representing more than 15 companies and 4 universities. Tag Games kindly sponsored the event, buying everyone a first drink.
The informal event brought developers together from across Scotland, and following a brief introduction featured ten speakers:
- Elaine Russell, Dare to be Digital, spoke about the annual games development competition and the accompanying showcase Dare Protoplay which will take place in Dundee this August.
- Paul Farley, Tag Games, spoke about the company’s work and growth, as well as the state of Scottish and mobile games development in general.
- Grant Clarke, University of Abertay Dundee, gave an overview of their existing games degree courses and continuing changes to them.
- Stuart Gray, Whisky Biscuit, spoke about the recent formation of the company an release of first iPad title Warpath.
- Darran Jamieson, TPLD, discussed games for training and learning as well as announcing his new social site for UK game developers www.ukgamedev.com.
- Jessica Sage and David Morrison, Play2Improve, updated everyone about the development of FPSTrainer, as well as announcing the Dundee Game Jam taking part on the 28th May.
- Brian McNicoll, Dynamo Games, spoke about the company’s origins and growth, and social games development.
- Phil Harris, Square Go, explained the support and assistance that they, as games journalists, can offer to Scottish developers.
- Jon Sykes, Glasgow Caledonian University, focussed on “iOpiates” and how they relate to the research work carried out within the Emotionlab.
- Daniel Livingstone, University of The West of Scotland, spoke about the university, its games degree courses and its graduates.
Thanks go out to all of our speakers and to the volunteers who worked to make the event a success.
The next event will take place in roughly a month, in Glasgow. There are a number of ways to stay in touch and find out more about it:
If you’d like to help organise future events or have any feedback about this one, please let us know through the mailing list. We’re also looking to form a steering committee to plan future events and help direct the chapter.
Thanks again to everyone who attended, I look forward to seeing you in Glasgow!
]]>Attendance is free and everyone is welcome, so please register here and tell all your friends!
From 8pm we’ll be hosting a series of microtalks from Dundee studios, events and organisations. The rest of the evening will give you a chance to meet other developers and like-minded individuals from across the country.
Braes serves food until 7:30pm; we’ll be located downstairs in Braes Below from 7pm until closing.
This will be the first of our monthly meetings located in Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Follow us to keep up to date about this and future events:
http://www.facebook.com/IGDAScotland
http://twitter.com/igdascotland
http://groups.google.com/group/igdascotland
We’ll also be using these sites to help coordinate travel from Edinburgh and Glasgow, so stay tuned if you plan to make the trip.
]]>We’re well on our way to having the required number of IGDA members (just waiting on a couple of confirmations) and seeing a lot of support for the chapter.
What’s next?
The next immediate step is to decide what everyone wants to get out of chapter meetings, and agree on a format and location based on that.
After that, we need to work towards electing a steering committee (within the next 6 months) and eventually forming as a non-profit organisation. But all that is meaningless unless we’re having meetups worth attending.
How can I stay in touch?
In order to help organise the chapter, we have a mailing list. Please feel free to sign up, introduce yourself, and share any suggestions you have about what would make meetings worthwhile for you.
We’re also doing that Facebook thing and that Twitter thing.
Where did you get your beautiful logo?
The talented Mr Liam Wong made it.
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