For those of you who can’t make it to the IGDA Annual Meeting (March 12th, noon Pacific time at GDC Room 133 North Hall), we have partnered with GameDev.net to do a live stream of the event. I encourage you to watch! The stream is open to the general public, no IGDA membership required. Click here for a gCal reminder:

We’re going to try and archive the video too — there may be some legalities to be ironed out on that front. Probably not, but you never know what the union regulations at a convention center are. I’m looking into the matter.

Detailed info:

IGDA Annual Meeting @ GDC – Watch Live!

The IGDA Annual Meeting is a yearly session that takes place during GDC where the Board of Directors and organization management present a rundown of the association’s progress over the last year, as well as an indication of what’s in store for 2010. Attendees also get to meet the newly-elected Board members and have a direct Q&A session with the Board to address any issues the membership may have. In the past, this was limited to those in attendance, but this year anyone with an internet connection can tune in live to take part in the Board Q&A session. GameDev.net will be streaming this meeting over their uStream broadcast channel and online chat will be enabled to allow viewers to comment on the discussion.

Where: GameDev.net Live

When: Friday, March 12^th from 12pm-1pm PST

(if you are attending GDC, this is in Room 133, North Hall)

This event will take place assuming suitable network connection is available for streaming. At the very least, we will attempt an audio stream. While questions will be taken from the chat room, precedence will be given to those members in attendance. Comments, however, will be actively voiced aloud by the moderator to add to the discussion assuming they are relevant and thoughtful.

Still can’t make the live event? We’ll do our best to get permission from GDC officials to record it as well so you can view it later and join in on the discussion in the IGDA forums.

(It’s official — I have been nominated and will be running for IGDA Board. Elections open soon, and that means the candidate statements go up on the IGDA website soon. Since my statement is done and submitted, I figured I would post it here. It’s based off a post I made here some months ago.)

“How will the IGDA tangibly benefit me as a developer?”

Prospective members ask this question time and time again. Often, we struggle to answer. Sometimes we mention one of our excellent Special Interest Groups to convince a developer to join, or we use IGDA events like the Leadership Forum and the Global Game Jam to show what the IGDA does for its community. Unfortunately, sometimes these groups and events alone fail to persuade potential IGDA members, and we lose the opportunity to expand our organization.

As an IGDA Board member, my number one priority will be to strengthen local chapters worldwide by making them a vital part of their local game development scene.

I’ve been an organizer of the Boston IGDA Chapter since 2006, and I became its president in April 2009. I’ve worked to grow the chapter, turning it into a force in the local community. When local developers ask me to describe the benefits of IGDA membership, I can respond with a list of tangible benefits provided by our chapter:

• A place for networking, with 100-200 people at our monthly meetings, grown from 30 people in 2005
• A monthly speaker on game development topics
• A news feed for relevant local events
• An active job board
• Community coordination around large-scale events (discounts to local conferences, placing our members on panel discussions, etc.)
• Political coordination around issues of game censorship legislation, tax credits, net neutrality
• A sense of belonging to a real community of local game developers

If every IGDA chapter worldwide could provide their members with a similar list of services, individual developers would immediately see the benefits that the IGDA brings them. Furthermore, they would see opportunities to volunteer on a local level, which would lead to greater member engagement with the IGDA.

Member engagement and communication on a chapter level are the foundation of the IGDA’s ability to advocate for game developers. Imagine if all of our chapters were strong; the IGDA could respond to hot-button QoL issues as they are raised by recommending that all of its chapters participate in a theme month, where the topic of discussion would be issues surrounding QoL. We could take notes from all the meetings worldwide and compile them on the IGDA Wiki. Such notes would be of value to the IGDA’s ongoing QoL efforts, giving the IGDA a better handle on where developers stand on the issue, and the meetings themselves would almost certainly cause volunteers to step forward and join our QoL initiatives.

I believe in the future of the IGDA — I’ve been a member since 2003 and it is obvious that we are doing more as an organization today than ever before. Yet there is much room for improvement, not just on the chapter level, but on issues of transparency, budget, and election process and policy. I’ll end this statement by encouraging you as a member to research each and every candidate on this page: it’s in your hands to elect the Board you want, so don’t throw away this opportunity to make a real difference.

Volunteer contributions:

• President, IGDA Boston Chapter, AKA Boston Post Mortem (2009-present)
• Coordinator, IGDA Boston Chapter, AKA Boston Post Mortem (2006-2009)
• Technology Co-Officer, Game Education SIG (2007-present)
• Member, Special Member Meeting Task Force (August 2009)

In an email that went out this morning to IGDA members, it was announced that I am on a Task Force to determine how to hold special member meetings. While this Task Force was put together in response to the upcoming meeting to vote on the removal of Tim Langdell from the IGDA Board of Directors, I want to clarify that our purpose and goal as a Task Force is to come up with a set of guidelines for running all future special membership meetings, not just this one.

I’m delighted to be working with a great group of people on this. In less than 48 hours we’ve already had substantive and productive discussion on the matter. I think we’re going to move very quickly on coming up with a set of recommendations to the Board.

If you have questions about how things are proceeding, do not hesitate to contact me. Leaving comments on this blog post is probably the best method as I can collect everthing in one place. I will do my best to respond, and I will relay any concerns of members to the Task Force itself. Sadly, I cannot comment on the specifics of our deliberations until we release our report publicly — this confidentiality was not my decision, but I have agreed to it because I feel that it is in the best interest of the IGDA to get this done as quickly and fairly as possible so that we can hold the special meeting itself.

Since the email system still seems broken (I am not receiving any of the emails sent to all IGDA members), I am reproducing this morning’s email below:

Dear IGDA Members,

As many of you are aware, the IGDA website was recently exploited to send emails to members. This use of private data occurred in the context of a group’s efforts to gain signatures for a petition. The day after the exploit we received the petition with signatures. The method used to gain these signatures has complicated an already complex situation. We have heard from those who feel they were justified in taking such measures, those who are concerned their privacy was violated, and many other perspectives, opinions, and concerns.

The debate over the issues at hand has had a negative impact on the association, and our ability to move forward on member programs and initiatives. Rather than continue a public and internal discourse on the circumstances and validity of the petition, Bob Bates and I have decided that the least damaging approach for the organization is to call a special membership meeting, as the co-Chairs may do as per the by-laws.

Since the IGDA does not yet have a policy for how to hold special membership meetings, at our Aug 5th meeting the Board chartered a Task Force comprised of IGDA Board members Tom Buscaglia and Coray Seifert, and at large members Darius Kazemi, Dustin Clingman and Brian Robbins, with the Executive Director acting in an advisory role to the Taskforce. The Taskforce will evaluate and recommend a policy regarding the methodology and procedures for holding special meetings of the membership of the IGDA, that serves the intent of the by-laws.

Once this course of action is established, it will be possible to fix the other details of the meeting, which needs to occur at least 35 days after the date is announced. We all share the goals of a fair and professional process that can let our organization move beyond this controversy, and I appreciate your patience as we work out the details.

Thank you,
Tobi Saulnier
Co-Chair
IGDA

Given recent events in the IGDA, people have been talking about how the election process for the IGDA Board is broken. I agree that it is.

That’s it. It is not a bad skeleton of a process, but there are some problems with it. The brief statement of candidacy is not a lot to go on. In fact I have voted for Board members that I wish I hadn’t, simply because I recognized their names from various IGDA mailing lists as active volunteers, and their short candidacy statement seemed pretty good.