Well, I hope you've all enjoyed our video coverage of this year's phenomenal GCAP conference. We captured 50 gigs of raw data, compressed it down and uploaded all 12+ hours of footage on to youtube. Thankfully, Google had upgraded our youtube account for hour long videos so we didn't need to chop each session into pieces and manage them into playlist's like we had to previously.
While we did manage to get over 12 hours of footage, it represents only a tiny fraction of what the conference had on offer. There were three concurrent presentation streams which means there were almost three times as many talks than what we could manage to get, as well as the awesome social events which you can only experience by attending GCAP. There was also an *entire day* on Serious Games as well.
This year's GCAP was extremely well organised, well catered, and ran flawlessly. I think it's a great testament to the efforts of the organisers that everything ran without a hitch. Having the welcome reception a minute's walk away from the conference and poker night at Crown Casino was highly convenient too!
What was absolutely outstanding about this conference for me was the quality of the speakers, and particularly the international speakers chosen for GCAP 2011. The GDAA did an exceptional job of sourcing four quality international speakers from different areas of the industry. Each speaker gave something highly interesting and relevant to offer, and if you haven't seen their talks yet, they are highly essential viewing.
Scheduling Mike Acton's talk "We Need To Aim Higher" as the opening keynote was pure genius as it set up the mood for the whole conference. Mike argues that the issues on triple a console development, the high Aussie dollar and investment pull-out, and everything that has hit the local industry in recent times is all irrelevant. His talk is highly inspirational and should be a wake up call for anyone still hung up on local studio closures. I urge you all to check out his talk right away, if you have not already!
I know there a lot of other attendees who were very happy with this year's GCAP, one of whom is Adelaide-based veteran developer, Tony Albrecht. He had this to say about what he got from this year's GCAP...
(Tony) The best thing I took from this conference was the sense of community - maybe because with so many studio closures, there has been far more cross pollination of talent. Maybe it's just because the dev community is maturing. Maybe it's just me. Either way, I left feeling positive about where our dev scene is going, about those awesome devs that have had the balls to take that scary first step into the start up scene and are now really finding traction, shipping games and paying salaries.
From the perspective of a student, Daniel Clayton says it was the best $135 he spent this year...
(Daniel) At the ‘Farewell’ of the conference, Tony Reed, the organiser, said “I hope you guys now realise what we were getting at with this theme” (paraphrased of course).
And I do.
All in all, it was definitely one of the great GCAP conferences in memory. A huge kudos and thanks to the GDAA, Tony Reed, Mike, and everyone else who had a hand in making this year's conference such an inspirational and important one for the local games industry. If you missed it this year, you need to make sure you're there for the next one!