June Meetup

[Morgan Ramsay]

I know we're still reeling from Tyler's shocking betrayal and sudden departure to Santa Cruz, but perhaps, in spite of the tall shadow cast upon our once monthly gatherings, we should resume normal operations in June? Assuming we still have the numbers?

 

—Morgan

[Jim Buck]

I'm down! Next Thursday per 1st-Thu-of-the-month?
Recently there was a monthly Eve Online meetup at
Kaminski's in Poway, and it was a pretty solid
location with a section in the back that one
could have for chatting/eating/drinking/etc. with
karaoke later in the evening at the other end of
the establishment (depending on the night,
though; website says Fridays, but we were there
on a Thursday when they had it last month, so dunno).

--
Jim Buck
CEO, Lead Developer
jb...@twitchythumbs.com
Twitchy Thumbs Entertainment, Inc.
http://www.twitchythumbs.com

[Andy Schatz]

Poway is crazy far... I definitely won't be able to make it.

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[Jim Buck]

Guys - we gotta figure out something if this group isn't to die, which, if not for Morgan's message, it surely would have. We need a location that a vast majority of people are willing to go to regularly. Of course everyone prefers if the location were next door to their home, but that isn't possible. We do live in San Diego, though, and most of San Diego is easily accessible by our awesome highway system.

When I was a part of Boston Indies, people from all over Massachusetts were making it regularly to the tune of ~100 people each month (a 100! we've never come even close to 1/4 or 1/3 of that on our best days!), and if you know Massachusetts, it's some serious driving to get to Waltham (where the meetup is/was) unless you are Right There(tm), and the parking was ridiculous. And these people were making that hike during winter months as well without any issue. (I was a solid 30 mins one-way myself, and I was relatively close.) Are we wussies compared to the MA folk?? I certainly hope not! ;)

So, where/when can we do this so that most people can attend? Or "screw it" and let the group die? There are certainly a ton of gamedev-related meetups in San Diego these days to take up the slack anyway, but I think we still would benefit from an indie-focused one. We just need regular attendance and from some of the more "famous" and "real" (for lack of better terms) devs that we almost never see (Pocketwatch peeps, Noel [who seems to have one foot out the door spending half the time in Spain {yup, I'm jealous ;) }], Behemoth, Psyonix, etc.).

At 09:23 AM 5/24/2016, Andy Schatz wrote:

Poway is crazy far... I definitely won't be able to make it.

On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 9:18 PM, Jim Buck <jb...@twitchythumbs.com > wrote:

I'm down! Next Thursday per 1st-Thu-of-the-month? Recently there was a monthly Eve Online meetup at Kaminski's in Poway, and it was a pretty solid location with a section in the back that one could have for chatting/eating/drinking/etc. with karaoke later in the evening at the other end of the establishment (depending on the night, though; website says Fridays, but we were there on a Thursday when they had it last month, so dunno).

At 06:49 PM 5/23/2016, Morgan Ramsay wrote:

I know we're still reeling from Tyler's shocking betrayal and sudden departure to Santa Cruz, but perhaps, in spite of the tall shadow cast upon our once monthly gatherings, we should resume normal operations in June? Assuming we still have the numbers?

­Morgan

[Andy Schatz]

Oh, I totally get that... it doesn't need to literally be next door to me.  But Poway is a long ways from city center.  Maybe try it and see who can show up?  How many people are up in that area?

If the goal is to try to get Pocketwatch, Psyonix, Behemoth, Bartlett Jones folks though, close to downtown really is best.  That said, we've had the least attendance, so maybe we shouldn't be dictating location?

On a side note... I've been intending to put a little more effort into meetups again once my daughter becomes a little less of a handful.  Hopefully not long now.

I don't think we need to worry about it dying entirely, even if theres a short break!

-Andy

--

[Noel Llopis]

We may have good highways, but the traffic from North County is just crazy :-(

I won't be back until late August, but I would love to see the group meet regularly. Unfortunately anything further south than La Jolla is a no-go for me, that's why I haven't shown up in a long while. We talked about doing north and south county meetups separately, but we don't have enough people as it is, so we should work at combining them instead of splitting them.

The thing we're suffering the most from is a good meeting place. Stuff like Rock Bottom is barely OK (loud, hard to mingle, etc). If we had a good place, I bet we would get a lot more attendance too.

--Noel

[Mark Wazny]

By the way, I know I just stopped going(the last few months have been crazy for me), so it's probably time for an explanation. In January, the company I worked for was acquired by Apple. Since then, there's been a ton of travel up to Cupertino and I'll be moving permanently to San Jose next month.

It's been great coming to these meetups and it's sad to be leaving you guys. Best of luck with everything(both with the group and your individual games). Finally, thank you all for your support and advice.

-Mark

[Andy Schatz]

Bye Mark!  Congrats on the new gig!

-Andy

[Andy Nguyen]

The community is what we make it.  Last Weekend we had one of the biggest get togethers of game developers, game companies, artists, and gamers in San Diego, at Triton Gaming Expo.  It was an event that I can only continue to see grow.  In many ways, the Triton Gaming Expo is more important for the growth of our community than casual meet ups because it fully represents the entirety of the game industry in San Diego.

I reached out to this community a month ago to try to generate interest in supporting that meet up and I only got ONE response.

The opportunities are out there, but if you want this community to grow you have to take advantage of them. 

Andy Nguyen / Producer and Designerang...@pocketwatchgames.com / (858)722-2002 Pocketwatch Gameshttp://www.pocketwatchgames.com

On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Mark Wazny <marcusm...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Jim Buck]

I'll respond to the location responses a bit
later after doing some research, but I wanted to
comment on this one. I totally didn't catch your
posting! In fact, when searching my emails for
San Diego Indies, nothing comes up recently for
"expo" or anything at all for "triton". I wonder
if the post got spam-filtered to some people
(including me), hence why the lack of responses??
I'll definitely want to look into this if some
stuff is not making it to people due to email shenanigans.

I did see a brief reference to the event on
Facebook (I think via Kujo?) but got the
impression it was mostly e-sports...? What San
Diego gamedevs were in attendance and showing stuff?

At 11:19 AM 5/24/2016, Andy Nguyen wrote:
>The community is what we make it. Last Weekend
>we had one of the biggest get togethers of game
>developers, game companies, artists, and gamers

>in San Diego, at Triton Gaming Expo. It was an

>event that I can only continue to see grow. In
>many ways, the Triton Gaming Expo is more
>important for the growth of our community than
>casual meet ups because it fully represents the
>entirety of the game industry in San Diego.
>
>I reached out to this community a month ago to
>try to generate interest in supporting that meet
>up and I only got ONE response.
>
>The opportunities are out there, but if you want
>this community to grow you have to take advantage of them.

[Andy Schatz]

Andy's email was on May 5, check your spam filter around then?  Also btw it's Kojo not Kujo :)

-a

[Alex Ferbrache]

Also here's the direct link to Andy's post on Google Groups:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/san-diego-indies/lb8uHmApH6k

[Matt Siegel]

From my perspective, the problem is actually internet communication. Although it's possible that I just shut off some notifications when I moved and didn't turn them back on... but as far as I know it's just this email group which, is very easy to ignore in the cacophony of other garbage that goes through the email tubes. I think the last time I checked this was 3 months ago and I actually WANT to go drinking with game devs.

In STL we had a fairly active facebook group and now a Slack channel. It is much easier to keep tabs during downtime at work and then you feel more comfortable showing up when you are talking to people more than once a month. In fact I still communicate with STL devs on Slack on a regular basis and I feel like I know them much better in spite of spending roughly equal time in each city's communities.

It makes sense. If you want to apply gamedev principles to this, interaction once per month is very bad for forming retention habits. A forum for persistent internet communication is the only thing convenient enough for people to continually engage with the community.

San Diego's north/south layout also sucks but I think that is more easily overcome if the community is more engaged.

[Morgan Ramsay]

With respect to casual meetups, we used to alternate every other month between Carlsbad, Miramar, and Downtown to make sure each segment of the local game dev community had a chance to be involved.

 

But a moving venue requires more organization and a lot more effort. It takes a lot to get a good events organization together, but I'm not sure that's what this group wants. This group was always a 5-15 gathering of likeminds around grub and grog.

 

With respect to what it would take to build a good local events organization, here's an example from our recent past.

 

When Jim, Noel, others, and I were running IGDA San Diego between 2006 and 2008, we were pulling in 150-200 attendees to our bimonthly speaker/panel events and 50-75 attendees to our bimonthly pub outings.

 

To achieve those numbers, we had:

 

- an active website with community news, event reviews, a calendar, and a company directory;

- a locally hosted RSVP system;

- a mailing list with at least a few thousand valid e-mails covering the San Diego-Orange County region;

- multiple "save the date/RSVP" announcements leading up to each event;

- a volunteer street team for promoting events at studios and game-related businesses (e.g., stores, LAN);

- event ads in local newspapers and online;

- posters, banners, attendee badges, and sponsored printing;

- free pizza and sandwiches;

- volunteer photographers/videographers;

- a volunteer board of directors (12 members) representing all of the major companies in town (Jim Buck, Noel Llopis, Derek & Mrs. Tarvin, Aaron Tarvin, Meelad Sadat, Ryan Schwayder, Mark Storch, Wolfgang Engel, Mike Acton, Andi Smithers, Morgan Ramsay); and

- a dozen sponsors or so, including Rockstar, High Moon, The Art Institute, Sony, and Qualcomm.

 

We also hosted our events at the state-of-the-art Qualcomm Auditorium, which is no longer available to non-501(c)(3) organizations. We did one event at the San Diego Convention Center, too, as part of SIGGRAPH's Sandbox Symposium.

 

What we were doing then on a strictly volunteer basis was not sustainable though. If I ever built an events organization again, I'd want to make sure that org actually had revenue, so we could afford to be independent and keep doing events when sponsors/volunteers dropped out or moved on.

 

—Morgan

--

[Andy Schatz]

I should have been a bit more direct in my last email: I don't think we need to freak out that the community is going to die.  We just need someone to put in more than minimal effort to bringing up attendance.  If it's just a regular event where a few people get together for beers, it won't bring people in.  But if someone is willing to do an evite, reach out to people, post on the IGDA site, and possibly vary the content so that it's more than just a beer social, events will be great.  We had great attendance when Noel and I drove the push to reboot the indie scene a few years ago, and that required a modicum --not an immense amount -- of effort.

If it's just a regular beer social with a single thread on this group, it's never gonna be more than it has been.  That's fine too.

-Andy

[Jim Buck]

Ahh, in my "events" folder, not "s.d.i.". Looking at that, I realize the reason I didn't respond was that I could not attend due to my daughter's Polish folk dancing performance in Escondido being smack dab in the middle of the UCSD event this past Sunday, so I had no chance at making it. But, yeah, it would have been great for indies and even non-indies alike to have shown their stuff at the expo. I guess it being called Triton didn't help since it doesn't sound like anything other than the closed down studio (Trion), not to my own ears at least.

Did you guys go? Who else "represented"?


P.S. I realized my typo with Kojo right after I hit send. (Sorry, man!) Damned Stephen King novel/movie! :)

At 11:53 AM 5/24/2016, Alex Ferbrache wrote:

Also here's the direct link to Andy's post on Google Groups:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/san-diego-indies/lb8uHmApH6k

On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 11:52 AM, Andy Schatz < an...@pocketwatchgames.com> wrote:

Andy's email was on May 5, check your spam filter around then? Also btw it's Kojo not Kujo :)

-a

On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 11:28 AM, Jim Buck <jb...@twitchythumbs.com > wrote:

I'll respond to the location responses a bit later after doing some research, but I wanted to comment on this one. I totally didn't catch your posting! In fact, when searching my emails for San Diego Indies, nothing comes up recently for "expo" or anything at all for "triton". I wonder if the post got spam-filtered to some people (including me), hence why the lack of responses?? I'll definitely want to look into this if some stuff is not making it to people due to email shenanigans.

I did see a brief reference to the event on Facebook (I think via Kujo?) but got the impression it was mostly e-sports...? What San Diego gamedevs were in attendance and showing stuff?

At 11:19 AM 5/24/2016, Andy Nguyen wrote:

The community is what we make it. Last Weekend we had one of the biggest get togethers of game developers, game companies, artists, and gamers in San Diego, at Triton Gaming Expo.  It was an event that I can only continue to see grow. In many ways, the Triton Gaming Expo is more important for the growth of our community than casual meet ups because it fully represents the entirety of the game industry in San Diego.

I reached out to this community a month ago to try to generate interest in supporting that meet up and I only got ONE response.

The opportunities are out there, but if you want this community to grow you have to take advantage of them.

[E McNeill]

I was there! It was cool.

I'm crunching right now and in no position to organize or even attend anything. But I generally love to meet up with y'all, and I hope we keep doing it in some form.

Perhaps it would make sense to make our meetups an IGDA thing, since they're doing pretty well recently? Like a monthly casual meetup, perhaps with a "no students" rule or something like that, if that's not too douchey. I enjoy this group's smaller meetups, but I'd be happy to have other pro game devs show up too, and maybe the IGDA would be willing to handle the organization / outreach required for that. I don't know. Just thinking out loud.

- E

--

[Jim Buck]

Looking at a map, it looks like the center is on Miramar based or the no man's land triangle just south (below 52 and wedged between 805 and 163), so there is no real center location to really meetup per se. We've talked before of rotating areas but then got into a long stint of Hillcrest. The BBQ place a year or two ago was pretty solid, but we somehow never went back. It had an outdoor area that was amenable for both general chit-chat as well as a more official talk with a screen. Generally, long ago meetups found regular haven at KStrauss in Sorrento Valley, Rock Bottom in UTC, Qualcomm in Sorrento Valley (after talks), even once downtown at BASIC Pizza and once at Callahan's in Mira Mesa, etc. All of these had decent attendance. (Some of those were IGDA mixers.)

As for the type of venue, it's hard to really attract everyone since everyone has different ideas of what is best for a mixer. For my own taste, I despise the sit-down-at-a-table kind of mixers since it's anti-social except to talk to the guy across from you and to the left/right and think the better version is like the bar areas of Rock Bottom that has the tall bar tables that people typically use for setting down a drink and are otherwise standing up and moving around. But I know a lot of people are sticklers for sitting down and having an official meal (I typically eat at home with the family before heading out to these things). So, I have a hard time reconciling the *kind* of place nevermind the *location* of place.

Having said all of that, I think we definitely should push harder to have more than only "drink beer and chat over grub" meetups. We should definitely have meetups that, at least bi-monthly, include a talk.. but even some of the more "other" kinds of events are awesome, too, like when Andy had the 5-minute-talks of "most ideal game to make given enough time/money" and Dan Holbert's launch party at the LAN group's house. Those are a nice refreshing community-oriented kind of thing as well.

Anyway, not really sure where this message is/was meandering, but I have to pick up the daughter from school, so hitting send for now.. but hopefully this nudges discussion along in some direction. :)

At 10:21 AM 5/24/2016, Andy Schatz wrote:

Oh, I totally get that... it doesn't need to literally be next door to me. But Poway is a long ways from city center. Maybe try it and see who can show up? How many people are up in that area?

If the goal is to try to get Pocketwatch, Psyonix, Behemoth, Bartlett Jones folks though, close to downtown really is best. That said, we've had the least attendance, so maybe we shouldn't be dictating location?

On a side note... I've been intending to put a little more effort into meetups again once my daughter becomes a little less of a handful. Hopefully not long now.

I don't think we need to worry about it dying entirely, even if theres a short break!

-Andy

On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 10:03 AM, Jim Buck <jb...@twitchythumbs.com > wrote:

Guys - we gotta figure out something if this group isn't to die, which, if not for Morgan's message, it surely would have. We need a location that a vast majority of people are willing to go to regularly. Of course everyone prefers if the location were next door to their home, but that isn't possible. We do live in San Diego, though, and most of San Diego is easily accessible by our awesome highway system.

When I was a part of Boston Indies, people from all over Massachusetts were making it regularly to the tune of ~100 people each month (a 100! we've never come even close to 1/4 or 1/3 of that on our best days!), and if you know Massachusetts, it's some serious driving to get to Waltham (where the meetup is/was) unless you are Right There(tm), and the parking was ridiculous. And these people were making that hike during winter months as well without any issue. (I was a solid 30 mins one-way myself, and I was relatively close.) Are we wussies compared to the MA folk?? I certainly hope not! ;)

So, where/when can we do this so that most people can attend? Or "screw it" and let the group die? There are certainly a ton of gamedev-related meetups in San Diego these days to take up the slack anyway, but I think we still would benefit from an indie-focused one. We just need regular attendance and from some of the more "famous" and "real" (for lack of better terms) devs that we almost never see (Pocketwatch peeps, Noel [who seems to have one foot out the door spending half the time in Spain {yup, I'm jealous ;) }], Behemoth, Psyonix, etc.).

[Morgan Ramsay]

I'd say let's just get this on the calendar for now, but I'm not sure we really need to get together one week after another event.

 

Tonight @ 7 PM

BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse - Mission Valley

https://www.igdasandiego.org/event/may-mixer/

 

—Morgan

 

 

From: san-dieg...@googlegroups.com [mailto:san-dieg...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jim Buck
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2016 2:29 PM
To: san-dieg...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [san-diego-indies] June Meetup

 

Looking at a map, it looks like the center is on Miramar based or the no man's land triangle just south (below 52 and wedged between 805 and 163), so there is no real center location to really meetup per se. We've talked before of rotating areas but then got into a long stint of Hillcrest. The BBQ place a year or two ago was pretty solid, but we somehow never went back. It had an outdoor area that was amenable for both general chit-chat as well as a more official talk with a screen. Generally, long ago meetups found regular haven at KStrauss in Sorrento Valley, Rock Bottom in UTC, Qualcomm in Sorrento Valley (after talks), even once downtown at BASIC Pizza and once at Callahan's in Mira Mesa, etc. All of these had decent attendance. (Some of those were IGDA mixers.)

--

[Tyler Glaiel]

do it nerds!

[Kojo Kumah]

Hey guys,

I actually sent this last night! Hope I'm not doing anyone :-P

I was waiting to weigh in and now I'd like to address some of the points that have come up. I'll try to keep this as short as I can.

IGDA-SD is indeed very active these days. If you're looking for regular and varied game dev events in San Diego then you can look at us. We do mixers, talks, game jams, demo nights, workshops, roundtables and more. We've been working pretty hard over the last year and plan on continuing to do so.

Our events are open to all game devs. Most of our active members these days are hobbyists and we're aiming to pull in more AAA devs as well. We can target events at specific demographics (indies, students, freelancers, etc.) but we're never going to tell someone that they can't come.

We do a social mixer on the last Wednesday of the month and have been every month since last June. The next one is tomorrow actually at BJ's in Mission Valley.

https://www.facebook.com/events/719518791523394/

We used to do these at Tabletop Commons in Hillcrest but we're moving away from that location for a number of reasons. I agree that "sit down" situations are not ideal and we're going to try to avoid those in the future. We're also going to have more events farther north. Our last mixer was in Clairemont and had pretty good attendance.

Regarding these indie meetups, I've really enjoyed the ones that I've been to but have always been confused about how open they're supposed to be. If you all don't mind us posting about these on our public channels then we wouldn't mind being the ones to organize them (finding locations, choosing activities, sending emails, etc.). Again, we're not going to say "No students allowed" but we can make it clear in the description that an event is catered to a certain crowd. We can also encourage everyone to be cool and not just throw business cards at whomever they see. Think about it and let us know.

At the same time, if anyone wants to host an event and would like some support then please let us know as well. We're very much open to suggestions for other types of events that you'd like to see. Also, if you just want us to promote an event you’ve got going on then please let us know. Triton Gaming Expo is an example of that. We posted and emailed about it but it was a VGDC at UCSD event. The more notice we get, the longer we can push something.

Also, we're going to be launching a community Slack team in the next week or so with a focus on how we can support each other locally. I'll let you all know when that's live.

As for the June indie meetup I'd like to suggest Brewski's Bar & Arcade in Miramar. I've been there a couple time for the Active Lifestyle Nerds meetup. It's pretty divey and next to a strip club but it's central, with cheap beer, free games and plenty of parking. It's a good bar.

http://www.brewskissd.com/

And in case you didn't know, here's a bunch of ways you can keep up to date with IGDA-SD.

FB Page 

FB Group 

Mailing List

Twitter

Website

I really recommend joining the mailing list. I'll forward next month's email to this list so y'all can get a taste of it.

P.S. Thanks for the correction before, Andy! No worries, Jim, I've gotten that quite a lot. Stupid, best-selling author! :-P I do appreciate the apology though :-)

-Kojo

----- Reply message -----
From: "Kojo Kumah" <hey...@gmail.com>
To: <san-dieg...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [san-diego-indies] June Meetup
Date: Tue, May 24, 2016 7:33 PM

Hey guys,

I was waiting to weigh in and now I'd like to address some of the points that have come up. I'll try to keep this as short as I can.

IGDA-SD is indeed very active these days. If you're looking for regular and varied game dev events in San Diego then you can look at us. We do mixers, talks, game jams, demo nights, workshops, roundtables and more. We've been working pretty hard over the last year and plan on continuing to do so.

Our events are open to all game devs. Most of our active members these days are hobbyists and we're aiming to pull in more AAA devs as well. We can target events at specific demographics (indies, students, freelancers, etc.) but we're never going to tell someone that they can't come.

We do a social mixer on the last Wednesday of the month and have been every month since last June. The next one is tomorrow actually at BJ's in Mission Valley.

https://www.facebook.com/events/719518791523394/

We used to do these at Tabletop Commons in Hillcrest but we're moving away from that location for a number of reasons. I agree that "sit down" situations are not ideal and we're going to try to avoid those in the future. We're also going to have more events farther north. Our last mixer was in Clairemont and had pretty good attendance.

Regarding these indie meetups, I've really enjoyed the ones that I've been to but have always been confused about how open they're supposed to be. If you all don't mind us posting about these on our public channels then we wouldn't mind being the ones to organize them (finding locations, choosing activities, sending emails, etc.). Again, we're not going to say "No students allowed" but we can make it clear in the description that an event is catered to a certain crowd. We can also encourage everyone to be cool and not just throw business cards at whomever they see. Think about it and let us know.

At the same time, if anyone wants to host an event and would like some support then please let us know as well. We're very much open to suggestions for other types of events that you'd like to see. Also, if you just want us to promote an event you’ve got going on then please let us know. Triton Gaming Expo is an example of that. We posted and emailed about it but it was a VGDC at UCSD event. The more notice we get, the longer we can push something.

Also, we're going to be launching a community Slack team in the next week or so with a focus on how we can support each other locally. I'll let you all know when that's live.

As for the June indie meetup I'd like to suggest Brewski's Bar & Arcade in Miramar. I've been there a couple time for the Active Lifestyle Nerds meetup. It's pretty divey and next to a strip club but it's central, with cheap beer, free games and plenty of parking. It's a good bar.

http://www.brewskissd.com/

And in case you didn't know, here's a bunch of ways you can keep up to date with IGDA-SD.

FB Page 

FB Group 

Mailing List

Twitter

Website

I really recommend joining the mailing list. I'll forward next month's email to this list so y'all can get a taste of it.

P.S. Thanks for the correction before, Andy! No worries, Jim, I've gotten that quite a lot. Stupid, best-selling author! :-P I do appreciate the apology though :-)

-Kojo

[Kojo Kumah]

*Not spamming anyone, even though now I am. Sorry!

-Kojo

[Kojo Kumah]

Hey guys,

I was waiting to weigh in and now I'd like to address some of the points that have come up. I'll try to keep this as short as I can.

IGDA-SD is indeed very active these days. If you're looking for regular and varied game dev events in San Diego then you can look at us. We do mixers, talks, game jams, demo nights, workshops, roundtables and more. We've been working pretty hard over the last year and plan on continuing to do so.

Our events are open to all game devs. Most of our active members these days are hobbyists and we're aiming to pull in more AAA devs as well. We can target events at specific demographics (indies, students, freelancers, etc.) but we're never going to tell someone that they can't come.

We do a social mixer on the last Wednesday of the month and have been every month since last June. The next one is tomorrow actually at BJ's in Mission Valley.

https://www.facebook.com/events/719518791523394/

We used to do these at Tabletop Commons in Hillcrest but we're moving away from that location for a number of reasons. I agree that "sit down" situations are not ideal and we're going to try to avoid those in the future. We're also going to have more events farther north. Our last mixer was in Clairemont and had pretty good attendance.

Regarding these indie meetups, I've really enjoyed the ones that I've been to but have always been confused about how open they're supposed to be. If you all don't mind us posting about these on our public channels then we wouldn't mind being the ones to organize them (finding locations, choosing activities, sending emails, etc.). Again, we're not going to say "No students allowed" but we can make it clear in the description that an event is catered to a certain crowd. We can also encourage everyone to be cool and not just throw business cards at whomever they see. Think about it and let us know.

At the same time, if anyone wants to host an event and would like some support then please let us know as well. We're very much open to suggestions for other types of events that you'd like to see. Also, if you just want us to promote an event you’ve got going on then please let us know. Triton Gaming Expo is an example of that. We posted and emailed about it but it was a VGDC at UCSD event. The more notice we get, the longer we can push something.

Also, we're going to be launching a community Slack team in the next week or so with a focus on how we can support each other locally. I'll let you all know when that's live.

As for the June indie meetup I'd like to suggest Brewski's Bar & Arcade in Miramar. I've been there a couple time for the Active Lifestyle Nerds meetup. It's pretty divey and next to a strip club but it's central, with cheap beer, free games and plenty of parking. It's a good bar.

http://www.brewskissd.com/

And in case you didn't know, here's a bunch of ways you can keep up to date with IGDA-SD.

FB Page 

FB Group 

Mailing List

Twitter

Website

I really recommend joining the mailing list. I'll forward next month's email to this list so y'all can get a taste of it.

P.S. Thanks for the correction before, Andy! No worries, Jim, I've gotten that quite a lot. Stupid, best-selling author! :-P I do appreciate the apology though :-)

-Kojo

[Justin Cox]

Hey All,

Looks like I totally missed most of the discussion as it was happening last week. I'm totally down for going to Brewskis Bar in Miramar. I'm for Thursday June 9th. Is 7pm good or would perhaps sometime earlier be more feasible?

Perhaps to help pool our efforts, we could probably have an #indiedev channel on IGDA-SD's Slack. Also I'm sure one of us can fairly quickly program a bot that can integrate the event announcements, maybe even generate a Google Forms based RSVP system, if that's alright with you Kojo.

[Kojo Kumah]

Hey guys,

Here's that June email I promised. The description for the June mixer is all wrong (I put together pretty late at night) but the correct description is in the FB event. Just click the picture. Justin, thanks for the feedback! I think Morgan actually made a pretty good point about not having too many mixer so close together. The next IGDA one is Wednesday June 29 at Buffalo Wild Wings in Encinitas. So how about we wait till then? Should be a better location for you northerners too.

About the slack team I don't think having an indie dev channel is the kind of thing we're going for. For example, we have a carpooling channel and a classifieds channel. The distinctions we're making are more about purposes than people. We may support private channels eventually but not yet. You can always start your own group messages though.

Anyways, we're around and you all are always welcome at our events :-)

NEWS We're testing out a community based Slack team with a focus on how we can support each other locally. It's in a beta testing stage currently where we are evaluating it's usefulness and general usability. Stay tuned for updates on that. E3 is around the corner and there are a number of local folks heading up to LA. Please feel free to reach out to other expo goers in our Facebook Group to arrange carpooling, meetups or other accommodation sharing. UPCOMING EVENTS   DEV Talks: Pragmatic Game Development Saturday Jun 4, 2016 1PM - 3PM @ Art Institute of California - San Diego 7650 Mission Valley Rd, San Diego, California 92108 In this talk Robert Dunlap will be discussing a pragmatic approach to game development. Robert is the founder of Extrokold Games, a local independent studio that launched in May of 2015.  Extrokold released Shmadow in November 2015, a minimalist twin-stick shmup, and is deep in development on their second title Unearned Bounty, a Free for All Naval Combat experience.  Making games is often a passion project for people but passion alone will not get you to the finish line. Come and listen to Robert's methodology that emphasizes player experiences first and foremost. Robert will discuss project planning, team building and market research with specific examples from his own studio. This is an excellent opportunity for mindshare from a local indie running a very competent operation. Demo Day! Saturday June 25, 2016 1PM - 4PM @ Art Institute of California - San Diego 7650 Mission Valley Rd, San Diego, California 92108 Come check out some awesome work being done by developers in the community! Do you have a game project you'd like to show off? Please let us know! Would you like an opportunity to see a game in development and contribute crucial feedback that could help shape it into what it will ultimately become? Either way, see you at Demo Day ;-) Bring your E3 build too! June Mixer! Wednesday June 29, 2016 7PM - 10PM @ Buffalo Wild Wings in Encinitas 1068 N El Camino Real, Encinitas, CA 92024 Come check out some awesome work being done by developers in the community! Do you have a game project you'd like to show off? Please let us know! Would you like an opportunity to see a game in development and contribute crucial feedback that could help shape it into what it will ultimately become? Either way, see you at Demo Day ;-) Bring your E3 build too!

-Kojo