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Thoughts from a (girl) Gamer
Tara Voelker's thoughts. A lot about video games, a little about life
Category Archives: GDC Diary
Day 1 of GDC 2011
Posted by on February 28, 2011
After a day of horrible flights (including and awesome 5 hour layover in LA – never fly united), making new friends in the terminal and a very awkward laid out hotel, I’m finally here.
Also, thank god for speaker’s registration. While the normal line is literally out the door, I’m already inside. 
So, most posts will likely be from my phone. Sorry they’re short.
Here we go!
GDC Diary 2/25/11
Posted by on February 25, 2011
Well, yesterday I listed off the very long list of things I needed to get done before heading off to GDC. Guess how many of those things got done?
1 of them.
So yesterday was the launch of the space Shuttle Discovery. It was the ship’s last mission and it’s the oldest ship in the NASA fleet. Because of that, there was something insane like 40,000 people flocking to the Cape Canaveral/ Cocoa Beach area. I work in Merrit Island. Here’s a reference image.
So, as you may notice- all traffic goes write by my work on the way to the beach. Also, that road, 520, is the road everyone takes to get back to Orlando. Myself included. So my 45 minute drive home from work turned into a 2 1/2 hour ride home from work after I already stayed at work over an hour late.
That sucked. Although I did get this cool video:
Discovery taking off, as seen by everyone at Firebrand Games (where I work). Looks a lot bigger in person. We could hear it, but you can’t hear it in the video over the wind.
Anyway, so that only that got finished was my business card design, which I like a lot. After I get them printed I will take a picture of one so you can see it. Hopefully things will be a little more productive today. Although I doubt it. I will likely just throw in laundry and go out drinking and cram everything in tomorrow instead.
The Beginning of my GDC Diary
Posted by on February 24, 2011
Good morning everyone.
So, here I am. It’s Thursday. That’s three days before I fly out to California for this year’s GDC and get ready to speak there again. And once again, I feel like I’m totally not ready.
I’ve had so much going on this week. So, in addition to having some minor crunch on one of my projects at work (I’m currently working on 3 different titles), I’ve also had to find the time to get fitting for my wedding dress, write an article and two bios for the IGDA (International Game Developers Association) March newsletter, update information on the IGDA Game Accessibility SIG website, just do sort of GA SIG chair duties anyway, get a head shot taken for the newsletter, work with my fiance to design my kick ass business cards, get my hair redyed, go shopping, talk to the wedding caterer, register for the wedding since people insist on giving me gifts instead of cash … find time to think…pack, do laundry, register for parties and somewhere in there I should probably right some sort of rough outline for my actual round table at GDC. And honestly, at this rate I will be doing that one the plane out there.
Obviously, I don’t have all of those things done yet. I have until Saturday night to do them I all. I fly out of Orlando at like the crack of dawn on Sunday.
It’s going to be an adventure. I’m just hoping that all of my flights go smoothly and I don’t get stranded some where like last year. You know- when I got stuck in O’Hare for most of the day and ended up posting pictures of the jalapeno burger I got from the in airport Chili’s.
Either way, I’ve got everything set up from my phone so hopefully I can keep giving up constant updates. Versus last year, where I could only post when I was using my lap top that I didn’t always bring with me… which resulted in me posting very little and getting a lot of questions about where all the stuff I promised about GDC was. I didn’t even post a picture of me presenting. Although Gamespot did a full article on me, so I guess that sort of balances.
So here’s to the start of this year’s adventure – the Game Developers Conference 2011
Oh, and remember… there will also be stuff on the Facebook page and you can always follow me on twitter @TheGirlGamers
