[games_access] GDC 2008 Guidelines

[d. michelle hinn]

Ok...now that we are at the 11th hour for real...we have a wee bit of 
a train wreak with the proposals. We have a lot of overlap that I can 
see but can't show until I finish typing. Below are random issues and 
thoughts jammed into one email rather than 10.

A huge issue is language -- we need to be STRONG. This doesn't mean 
rude. But we need to stop doubting ourselves. It's coming through a 
bit here and there. We know what we are talking about and people want 
to get takeaway info that they can turn around and present to their 
company. We need to stop suggesting. Really. We do. The thing with 
GDC is that it is not an academic conference AT ALL so we don't have 
to do the lack of strong language thing that academia prefers. Unless 
we are suggesting something totally sci-fi 100 years in the future, 
we need to say that "here's what's wrong" and "here's what to do." We 
need to say this works because we've been doing this for a REALLY 
long time and we know. WE are the EXPERTS. We have to believe in that.

So we have a post-mort panel and a post-mort single session on one 
game in that panel. My worry is that they might see the overlap and 
knock the single session out in favor of the "more examples" approach 
with the panel. So we need to think this through a bit -- my 
suggestion is that we remove "post mort" from one of them. It doesn't 
matter to me which one. My gut is telling me to go with the panel and 
call Eitan's proposal something close but not the same. Thoughts?

We also have a lot of work to be done on the titles -- I'll see what 
I can do now. We just have a lot of titles that sound the same but 
aren't. We have to make sure all the proposals look unique enough to 
help the advisory board justify several instead of "well, let's just 
take one of the talks because they look so alike."

After I tinker a bit more, I'm going to start entering these into the 
system because once they are in I can still edit -- I just want to 
make sure I get through all the annoying parts of the submission 
process rather than cursing at them at 3am...I'd rather curse at 
content at 3am. :)

Why am I putting my name on them all even if it's not my proposal? 
Because we're using my login info to tag them all as SIG proposals. 
This will make the politicking easier. That's all there is to it. All 
names associated with any proposal can be changed, swaped out, etc 
later.

A side issue -- as much as it is feasible, I'd like to serve as the 
discussant/chair/whatever of every session we have so that I can 
present a 1-2 minute "this is what else is going on at GDC related to 
GA" and also to introduce the speakers. We had someone introduce 
Richard and I at Austin (we didn't know this beforehand) and I think 
it was really effective -- it kind of started things rolling in a 
less awkward fashion. After last year I think we can all agree that 
we need to push our own sessions much more strongly AT GDC (not to 
mention before...). We also need to push the booth so that would also 
be in that 1-2 minutes.

Michelle