IGDA Melbourne Meetup at the Embassy

(from Giselle Rosman, IGDA Melbourne)

After our successful relaunch at The Embassy bar and our Christmas BBQ, we're looking ahead to what we can do in 2010. We've been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of support for the chapter, and we hope that the coming year will see the IGDA Melbourne chapter become an integral part of the local development community.

We're committed to a mix of networking, social, and informative events for 2010 - see below - but we want to make sure that the chapter gives you what you want so if there are specific topics you'd like to see covered or ideas for alternatives, drop us an email at info@igdamelbourne.org.

First up in 2010 are:

Meetup at the Embassy - Tuesday 2 February @ 7pm

8pm: Eleisha Mullane is the Victorian Lead Organiser from the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance, the union for people working in media and entertainment industries including animation and game development.

Eleisha will be speaking about your rights as a worker, particularly focusing on the new industrial relations legislation that came into effect on the 1st of July 2009, and the new Modern Award that will now cover people working in games development.

She will also give a short update on a recent campaign in animation industry to assist people who were stood down and found that they had not been paid for some weeks.

Finally there will be some discussion around how the industry can work together to improve the games and animation industries.

If you have any questions in advance of the presentation Eleisha can be contacted on 1300 656 512 or email eleisha.mullane@alliance.org.au

To assist the union in researching the industry we would like to ask people to complete an short online survey about standard conditions that people work under in the industry. Click on the link below to participate. Please note it is quite an extensive survey.

http://surveys.alliance.org.au/index.php?sid=45516&lang=en

Facebook event

Open Mic at the Embassy - Tuesday 2 March @ 7pm

We've had a lot of interest in helping people put teams together so we want to use the March meetup to give people a chance to pitch their projects and speak to like-minded individuals. We're still putting the details together, but if you're looking to be part of something bigger, we'll have some more news at the February meetup.

IGDA Melbourne Forums & Opportunities

As well as the open-mic night, we also want to keep people informed on an ongoing basis. First up, we're looking at getting the Melbourne forums back up and running on the official IGDA site - www.igda.org/chapters. We'll let you know when that's done.

We're also looking at putting together an email containing jobs / opportunities for the local community, including internships, funding opportunities, people looking for teams, etc. This will be collated by a member of our organisation committee and sent out as required.

We also have some other exciting ideas that we'll announce as soon as we have things nailed down. For more information, or just to contact us with ideas, email us at info@igdamelbourne.org, join us on Facebook or LinkedIn, or follow us on Twitter.