[arg_discuss] ARG SIG Conference

[Wendy Despain]

Well, we are in the early, early stages of figuring all of this out
right now. When it comes time to really publicize the conference and
get the message out to the world, we'll have it honed and polished to
perfection. We're still building it right now, so hopefully it will
make more sense as time goes by, and we hope you'll all help shape the
direction of it.

I certainly didn't intend anything I said to be a critique of what
ARGfest is. I think ARGfest is great. I think SXSW and DIY Days and
all the other conferences are great. And it can certainly be argued
that who needs another conference to try to fit into the schedule?

But I feel like there really is room for one more conference - one
where we don't have to feel like we're just an add-on to a music
festival, or trying to explain to videogame developers what an ARG is.

I think ARGs and experience design and cross-media entertainment, and
all these other argish things deserve to be given the legitimacy of
their own conference, for developing and expanding the state of the
art in person, not spread out across five semi-related conferences, or
having developers (and semi-interested ad agencies) wholesale taking
over ARGfest and overshadowing the community elements there.

Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding what ARGfest wants to be. I'm
totally open to being told this is a bad idea. But I think we can
reach a wide audience this way.

Aren't there sessions you'd like to attend (or give!) that don't
really fit into any of these other conferences? That's what this is
for. (imho)

And as for infrastructure, its true that we sometimes have a hard time
organizing ourselves in this SIG, but we've actually got a lot of
administrative resources from the IGDA that we can draw on. There are
several people there with a lot of experience with the logistics of
putting on conferences, and they have said they're definitely willing
to do that for us - what we need to do is come up with the plan. Get
speakers lined up, etc. And I think we can do that.

Wendy Despain
quantumcontent.com


On Thu, August 6, 2009 2:20 pm, Brian Clark wrote:

>

> I'm really not feeling what the vision is for the conference. I can't

> imagine who'd go to it, or what we would get out of it.

>

> So what's the proactive vision of what you think this conference looks

> like,

> beyond the critique of what ARGfest is ... why would people go to it

> instead

> of DIY Days or Branded Entertainment Summit or SXSW or GDC or all of

> those

> other places that these people already go?

>

> And then ... isn't ARG-Sig a small enough ad hocracy that this seems

> like a

> huge undertaking to tackle with no infrastructure?

>

> Sorry to sound like Debbie Downer.

>

>

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Wendy Despain
quantumcontent.com