Sumea Meets

Forum

Some of you may be aware of the gamedev meetups that occur each month (http://gamedev.meetup.com/). It seems to me that while these are a good start, a lot more could come out of something like this. IMHO we also need something more to sustain the considerable momentum from FreePlay for the independent developer community.

The problems I see with the gamedev meetup are:
* no scope for negotiating day/time (it is set at Tuesday 8pm, monthly)
* hard to communicate with other people via the site
* limited scope for negotiating venue

One can pay to join meetup plus, which partially solves the last two problems.

My suggestion is that instead of (or as an adjunct to), we:

* Create a "Sumea Meets" (or SumeaT like that :) forum under General
* Select an organiser for each city
* Have some discussion about when/where/what frequency would be most suitable for people in that city
* Get the organiser to arrange meets on the selected day
* Pimp the sumea meets with the limited discussion capabilities that meetup.com has

The advantages of this scheme, as I see them, are:
* create a greater sense of community around the meets
* centralise the community about sumea
* allow discussions and networking to take place following each meet without needing to exchange email addys etc

I'm interested to hear people's thoughts on the above, and also to get a show of hands for the level of interest in various cities.

Whatchareckon?

I'd be happy to organise the Melbourne ones if noone else wants to take this role.

Cheers,

Mark/CW

Submitted by Kane on Wed, 26/05/04 - 8:22 PMPermalink

gday!

Sounds good to me, even though I didn't go to the IGDC and haven't been to any meetups before.

I am all for the whole thing, but of course there is the undeniable fact that I live in Tas-no-gaming-mania... [:(!]

Submitted by MoonUnit on Wed, 26/05/04 - 11:39 PMPermalink

sounds great to me, and i reckon youd perfect for our melbourne guru wombat :D

Submitted by DaMunkee on Thu, 27/05/04 - 12:21 AMPermalink

Sounds like a plan! I'll throw out my nomination for heading up the Perth Meets, although they'll have to wait until after July 15th :)

Submitted by bullet21 on Thu, 27/05/04 - 1:49 AMPermalink

I'd come along. Let's have it in the school holidays. It's in liek 4 weeks

Submitted by souri on Thu, 27/05/04 - 12:13 PMPermalink

Sounds great! Let me know what you need from the site to accomodate Sumea meets! I'd be happy to make a new forum section for it, and anything else on the site to help out!

Submitted by Jacana on Thu, 27/05/04 - 5:50 PMPermalink

Sounds like a great idea Mark :) As for Canberra I'd be willing to take that on!

I was talking with Aven last week about trying to organise a meet-up here so this is all in good timing!

Submitted by bullet21 on Thu, 27/05/04 - 5:57 PMPermalink

I can finally see the faces behind the text :)

Submitted by DaMunkee on Thu, 27/05/04 - 6:44 PMPermalink

quote:Originally posted by bullet21

I can finally see the faces behind the text :)

The question is do you really want to? I mean, I'm quite happy with Imagining each and every one of you as a Cyborg sent back from the future to come and take over the human race through game technology....or something :) So I guess my question is, would there be anyone in Perth willing to meet with me :)

Submitted by CombatWombat on Thu, 27/05/04 - 7:22 PMPermalink

Well we may just be cyborgs, but just with really good texturing for our faces...

I'll come along to a Perth meet in December, DaMunkee - got a 2 week in-law visit scheduled for Chrissy :)

Submitted by Sorceror Bob on Thu, 27/05/04 - 8:36 PMPermalink

I spose I can drag myself out of my hermit-esque seclusion to nerd things up for a few hours.. Err at Canberra I mean.

*pokes jac*

Submitted by Aven on Mon, 31/05/04 - 8:43 PMPermalink

Woo. SB will finally see daylight. If there are any other Canberrans out there (tbag ;) ), then we should organise something. Lunch or a movie :)