Ah GDC Summer tomorrow let's take a look at that email I was ignoring what time do we

staring at my phone at 5:30am, pretending I dragged myself to SF to stay in the cheapest place I could find, figuring out 5 levers to operate a shower that was made in the late 1800s, trying to not wake up the 3 other people in the room (2 of which I kinda knew from online), like

After confusion learning the site didn't seem to have a way to sign in (found a link in email), then going to the wrong networking area, I found I can take part in some sort of video networking? For several minutes I've been sitting here alone, listening to coffee ads on repeat.

After 15 minutes of "Waiting for reply..." either Speed Networking Lounge is a lie or I am the only person foolish enough to sign in for a 6am networking event

PS I thankfully didn't pay for this. our talk got in the (other?) GDC 2020 online, so free pass https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1026611/How-to-Run-Your-Own

There are only 2 networking rooms, each holds a maximum 12 people at once, and the 60 minutes is cut into 20 minute chunks. Incredible WHAT. It's like PS Home bowling where you had to wait for a lane in the digital alley.

Got put into a meeting room with 10 other attendees at random. Had about 20 minutes before we all got kicked out. That was our morning networking hour. Wheee. I guess we're lucky we made it into one of the...math...72 networking seats?

(image blurred for privacy of others there)

The sheer number of Other fields here for matchmaking shows that maybe they didn't think through their default/provided list very well?

Featuring these group text discussion on game design, programming, audio, visual arts and more

This event, which apparently had a total of 72 video networking slots (2 rooms of 12, changed every 20 minutes for one hour; still not over this given networking between attendees is the main value of industry conferences) also seems to have scheduled 6 session talks in parallel?

cool there's live video feed of jellyfish. I like jellyfish!

maybe I can chat with other people who also chill out watching jellyfish? jk discussion is not enabled for this. if you want to watch the jellyfish video at any point during this 12 hour period you must do so all alone

After scheduling 6 session talks in parallel (including at least one that would in most events be a keynote speaker? at 7am?), the schedule then has half an hour of total downtime during which you can watch jellyfish, meditation walk through, or click to browse art [see next]

community art gallery is something I had to document the experience of

note: the art is good, this is in not a complaint about the art. room itself is also impressive for browser render tech. but it steers like Descent (1995) + browsing thumbnails the size of my actual thumbnail

it felt like trying to line up docking at a space station in VR with little thrusters, I appreciate what it was going for and trying something new, but in hindsight sort of feel that bit would have better serviced the art if it'd just been a PDF download or google slides deck

The Live Discussion chat during the video (good talk, btw! keep an eye out for it in Vault if applicable to you) does not scroll automatically? Even after manually scrolling to the bottom, the only way I can notice there are new posts to read is the scrollbar scrunches up a bit.

Round table with limited seats, sure.

Inability as an attendee to even be a spectator in the online conversation between strangers or chat during it?

There are "no more seats available" at any round table, including ones hours later today, and ones at the end of the day on Thursday. This, is despite the notice that adding it to the schedule doesn't hold a spot. I suppose people found the links immediately, are leaving it open?

I have located the University Showcase

alright well it's been an exciting first day pretty sure I'm going to go focus on other work now since the networking part pretty much seems to have wrapped up at 7am after a 20 minute dozen-person breakout room anyway see some of y'all tomorrow

New surprise! Their direct message system cuts off any message you send over 1,000 characters. It does not present that information, show a characters remaining count, block you from typing or trying to send more than that, and it destroys any information past 1,000 you typed out

Moderators, repeatedly: you better not share any links during networking time, or we'll delete your message and ban you

What this means is they want you to be locked in on their platform to communicate and connect with others, also, their platform will self-destruct in 2.5 days.