[As Game Developers Conference approaches its 25th anniversary next February, a series of posts will give insight into the process and history behind the show. This time, organizers take a look at the Main Conference submission process, as first-round acceptances are sent out.]
Although there's still plenty going on around other GDC shows -- with GDC Online taking place in a couple of weeks and GDC China still on the agenda for December, organizers are well into the process of picking talks for GDC 2011.
The 25th annual Game Developers Conference -- celebrating a quarter-century of existence giving inspiration and practical take-away by developers for developers, is being held in San Francisco's Moscone Center next February 28 through March 4, 2011.
Last year, then-board member Simon Carless discussed the background of how talks get picked for GDC, explaining at the time:
"One initial point that is worth making strongly. I know that in some conferences (both outside the game industry and in), the Advisory Board can take a much smaller role in actually directly picking the content.
But one of the reasons that Game Developers Conference is so well respected, I believe, is that all of the talks are either empirically chosen from submissions, or carefully and specifically invited by the official GDC Advisory Board. The GDC organizers don't pick your talk -- key members of your own peer group pick your talk.
So rather than being hands-off 'advisors', multiple Advisory Board members grade every single submitted talk. They also discuss submitted and invited talk specifics via email, phone, and during the course of multiple in-person meetings. Finally, they coach and mold conditionally accepted GDC talks into a better end product."
We're doing the same this year, and after submissions that ended in August, GDC 2011 lecture selection has again been extremely competitive -- with more than 800 submitters vying for the opportunity to present at the next Game Developers Conference.
