I am attending both the Charity Hack November 3rd – 4th and the Rewired State Hack (24-25th November) PM or hit me up on the Goldsmiths FB page, myself and folks like Tudor, Petros will be happy to join your team! Game Jams every weekend at the Google Campus and can be found on the events page.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOSn_vC-7m8]
Game Jams.
What is a Game Jam? A 48-hour hack where you must develop and showcase an application or game (often of a given theme) within a limited time frame.
From a career and experience perspective participating in Game Jams is the smartest thing you can do. Whether your a hardcore programmer, level designer, sound guy, web coder or someone having a nervous breakdown because they belong mid-way between all the forementioned skill-sets (my category) – it doesn’t matter – go to these things. They are great.
During the Goldsmiths masters period, Game Jams contributed to almost an entire coursework submission, see here for my submission.
Twet provided a 3 month internship at M&C Saatchi and I’m still doing Freelance work for them! I pretty much owe the success of my Masters program to GameJams and I only went to two! Now I’ve gone to 6 and I continually meet the most interesting people at them.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NokbypwDZo&w=560&h=315]
Lecture Talks
I attend less of these because I’m always further inclined to listen to talks from the GDC Vault. If you missed it, the developer talks from this years Euogamer is a must see! There are a number of talks hosted by BAFTA Games in BAFTA (just off Piccadilly Circus) making the effort to see talks live is a 100 times better, you can give the speaker your full attention and there’s great networking opportunities afterwards. Nowhere else can you share a free beer with speakers like Peter Molyneux, Hideo Kojima, Ken Levine and Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka
Another great place to attend free lectures is the aforementioned Google Campus. As I work in the London Hackspace I’m often see lurking around there, attending pertinent but always interesting lectures. It’s worth keeping an eye on this page, the campus is a stone’s throw away from New Cross and I frequently attend interesting lectures from guest speaker and it’s all free! I will be talking at the next ‘Gamify My Health’ talk, dates have not been confirmed yet.
William Latham’s Business Classes
While I’m on the subject of resources that will are indispensably useful. William Latham’s business classes start deceptively easy but quickly bring the pain. Feeling bleary eyed from too much coding? Good. Open up Word and start writing William’s essays. The first coursework of 12 essays of 1000 and something words in 5 weeks almost killed me and the assignment became the worst mark of my Masters results. Seriously, take the Call of Duty contract assignment seriously now and you’ll really thank yourself later. Otherwise, the lessons taught in William’s class are invaluably useful in securing freelance work and always William has been a great mentor in securing work and providing comprehensive career advice. He has some incredible stories to tell and he is a great resource to have.