February Seattle Indie Meetup

[Cartman]

Time for another Seattle Area meetup. Everyone one who is interested in Indie/Casual Games in the Seattle area, please come on by. Everyone is welcome.

We'll go to our favorite Italian place:
http://www.miaromaitalian.com/

Come and join us this Saturday, February 2nd at 6pm if you can make it. We usually meet in the bar area to the right when you enter the restaurant.

I'll try to bring a laptop if you have any games you would like to get some feedback on.

Hope to see everyone there.

[Mike D Smith]

Sounds Great! I'll spread the word!

[ErikH2000]

I'm going this time. Anybody want to do a little show and tell with their projects? I will bring my laptop.

-Erik

[Cartman]

I'll have my laptop as well. Please bring any games you need feedback on, or just want to show us on a USB drive or CD and we'll try them out.

[Mike D Smith]

Yeah, actually, if you guys want to test out compatibility of your games, I have two laptops, one very old (XP) and one very new (Vista) that I'll bring along.

[ErikH2000]

The thing that perks my interest the most is seeing what other people are working on. Like Pyabo demoed some nifty platform/pattern-matching thing last time I went.

I'll bring some of the work-in-progress stuff for Caravel's latest game. Nothing spectacular, but I'll bring it.

-Erik

[Cartman]

Some people are mentioning wanting more content. Perhaps a topic for each meeting and maybe a speaker. If we can come up with some ideas at the meeting about what people are working on, need help with, or find interesting, that would be great.

[Pyabo]

Meh... I like the informal let's-have-a-beer sort of thing.

That said... I'm not gonna make it. Poker night at my place.

[lennard]

Y'all are too far down for me to jet down... but if there's ever a poker night around an event that I do attend... well, just say the word

[ErikH2000]

Originally Posted by Cartman

Some people are mentioning wanting more content. Perhaps a topic for each meeting and maybe a speaker. If we can come up with some ideas at the meeting about what people are working on, need help with, or find interesting, that would be great.

Speakers sounds cool, and I know one or two people I could prevail upon. Plus I think the folks that show up to our normal group have worthwhile things to say and show. I would consider it a good thing to keep mostly quiet for 15 minutes or so to hear it. Maybe something patterned after Toastmaster's where people volunteer to give a small, informal talk or presentation. No stress or big expectations, you know?

We are fairly polite people that have trained ourselves to not dominate conversations, but at times its really cool to just sit back and listen to what somebody else has learned. Like Cartman is too polite to go on for a 15 minutes straight with a post-mortem of Pirate Poker, but dammit, I would gladly listen to a 15-minute Pirate Poker post-mortem! Hence, a little structure to allow him to do this without feeling like a blowhard would not be a bad thing.

I also like the informal conversation part like Pyabo, but you don't have to pick one or the other. A common arrangement is to have people arrive, settle in, the organized part happens, and after that people chat in unstructured ways.

And none of this should be construed as criticism. I will happily attend the unstructured meets. The people that show up are good company, and Keith has my thanks for making it happen.

-Erik

[Backov]

Originally Posted by lennard

Y'all are too far down for me to jet down... but if there's ever a poker night around an event that I do attend... well, just say the word

I'm in the same boat, I'd love to attend one of these. The last time I proposed a Vancouver meeting there was the roar of the crickets.

[Cartman]

Y'all are too far down for me to jet down... but if there's ever a poker night around an event that I do attend... well, just say the word

We'll I do play poker regularly and have people over for poker parties from time to time.

[Mike D Smith]

Originally Posted by Cartman

Some people are mentioning wanting more content. Perhaps a topic for each meeting and maybe a speaker. If we can come up with some ideas at the meeting about what people are working on, need help with, or find interesting, that would be great.

Hmmm, that could be interesting but I'm not that excited about it. My main focus is to show off and checkout the latest on everyone's projects, get and give lots of great feedback, and network and chat with everyone.

The chance to do all that is enough to keep me pumped about it.

I also like the hang out feel without having things get too formal.

I'm thinking that the people suggesting more content are either ones that don't have games to show or haven't been to meetings where there were that many games to check out. My suggestion? Make more games! ^_^. I use these meetings as milestones to keep myself motivated to have something to show.

I'll be showing the latest on Caster and I'll want to talk about ideas for my next project.

Seriously, if everyone brings a game (or even just a game idea), we'll have plenty of content to keep everyone busy.

[Cartman]

I think the idea is to have a 5 minute talk about a topic that's of interest to all. Perhaps share your experiences with tools, programming languages, postmortem, etc. Nothing too formal, just a topic. The rest of the time can be showing off games, talking about indie politics, etc.

I think what some people have mentioned to me is that they have alot to share but it gets overshadowed sometimes.

We'll talk more on Saturday and find a happy consensus.

Looking forward to seeing everyone.

[Mike D Smith]

Fair enough. Sounds good.

[Mike D Smith]

Just to report, the meetup was great! I got so pumped and can't wait for the next one! Lots of great ideas, info, and feedback.

Vivia la indie!

[Pyabo]

Excellent! Let's settle on a date nice and early (like... now?) for March so I can plan accordingly and can make the next one.

Say... Saturday, March 8th?

[Cartman]

We decided at the meeting to set them as recuring on the first Saturday of every month, however we can do the 8th. Is everyone OK with that?