June Gathering: Goodbye Jyri, Hello Sonja!

Even though the heat wave is not exactly here yet, Finnish game developers are preparing for summer holidays and IGDA Finland will quiet down for a couple of months. At the June Gathering invitation we promised that Remedy will give a presentation. That started the rumor mill and draw people 45 minutes too early to the bar! Around 7PM there was already a queue forming at the door and total number of visitors climbed up to 147 (12 new). Thanks to the (wrong) rumors people were expecting to see Alan Wake demo but had to satisfy with a trailer video and photo travelogue from E3. The demo was not shown because Cuba Café have limited audiovisual devices but Remedy promised to show the Alan Wake demo in a more proper place in fall. Patience!

After the presentation Jyri gave a talk and told that he will have less time for IGDA Finland chapter due to the fact that Alan Wake will be released on spring 2010. He will anyhow follow the IGDA Finland chapter activities from the Advisory Board. From now on the Lead Coordinator will be Sonja Kangas who has been organizing IGDA Finland events for the last couple of years. Besides changing the Lead Coordinator there will also be some additions to IGDA Coordinators gang. New IGDA Finland Coordinators group and Volunteers will be introduced in fall.

IGDA Coordinators, Volunteers and Advisory Board wanted to thank Jyri for his efforts in supporting IGDA Finland chapter to become one of the most active IGDA chapters in the world. One outcome of the work is MVP Award which IGDA Finland Chapter got at GDC07.

After the speeches it was time for relaxation and chatting as usual. Even if Finnish game developers are starting their summer holidays soon, there was a lot of networking and discussions on the fact that K30 is currently the address for many Finnish game companies and that several interesting Finnish game productions will come out during the summer and fall 2009.

In fall we’ll give you more insights on what people can expect from IGDA Finland during the season 2009-2010 as well as how upcoming Finnish game releases will be shown at the pub nights. Until then, have a nice and relaxing summer! Game on!

Time for a Change

As I announced in the June gathering, I will be stepping down as the Lead Chapter Coordinator for IGDA Finland at the end of the month. But as all activities for this season are already done, in practice my successor Sonja Kangas is already acting in that role in preparing for the next season. The main reason for this decision was that I've noticed I just don't have the time and energy to put into IGDA activities as I used to. That's largely due to my day job keeping me super busy in trying to wake Alan. :) And now that we've announced the launch window, I'll be even busier in the future.

But part of the reason is that the time is right. 4 years is a long time doing something like this voluntarily after a full day of work at the office. I also have a great successor that is more than capable of taking our chapter even further. She's already been part of the coordinator group for 2 years so she knows the chapter activities inside & out. I am confident the transition will go super smoothly. So congrats Sonja, new IGDA Finland Lead Chapter Coordinator!

It has been fun and eventful 4 years that I've been acting as the Lead Chapter Coordinator. Over those years, we've hosted 52 events that served over 5800 people, switched gathering venues twice, had our first sponsored events, our first presentation events, introduced drink discounts, redesigned our logo twice, redesigned our website twice over & added a lot of features to it, etc. We've also enjoyed great international recognition as one of the most active and succesful chapters, even receiving an MVP award in spring 2007 from the main body of IGDA.

But most proud I am of the fact that I've managed to grow IGDA Finland team from 1 coordinator and the advisory board into a team of 6 coordinators, loads of volunteers and the advisory board. This enables us to do so much more as a chapter than any one man or woman ever could alone. It also makes it easy for me to move on, confident that there are others to carry on the work. This has also been the key factor why we have been able to grow every single year: bigger attendance averages as well as more and better events and activities.

But I am not fully done with IGDA Finland just yet! I will be joining the advisory board and as Lasse Seppänen steps down from the advisory board, I've promised to take over as the Advisory Board Chair. That's just a fancy way of saying I will now be one of the guys giving annoying advice instead of one of they guys trying to follow their advice. :)

I still believe very strongly in everything IGDA Finland stands for and will support it in the future as well, just from a more passive role, that's all. I wish the new coordinator team best of luck! And to the rest of you: So Long and Thanks for all the Fish! (And the PS3 + games!)

Signing off,

Jay

June Gathering: Tuesday 9th

It's time for IGDA Finland season 08-09 finale with a presentation from Remedy! Join us on June 9th and enjoy a fun evening with fellow developers. We would like to thank the Finnish game developer community for being so active. It has truly been a pleasure to organize the events for you! Also special thanks to Remedy for supporting IGDA Finland presentations session and Cuba Bar for the nice venue. After the June IGDA Gathering it's time for summer holidays. See you again in fall '09!

IGDA FINLAND JUNE GATHERING Place: Cuba Bar, Erottajankatu 4, 00120 Helsinki (map) Time: Tuesday, 9th of June, doors open at 19:00

IGDA Floor-ball Season Coming to an End

Hello! Just a short remainder about our floor-ball deal with Mr. Goodliving coming to an end with the last chance to participate on Thursday 4.6 (that's tomorrow, folks). We'd like to thank Mr. Goodliving for their generous offer during the past spring and hope that you liked it too! There might be chance to return with a similar deal after the summer, so if you (or your company) is interested in sharing your activities with the other fellow developers, just hook us up next Tuesday in the season ending meeting or write an email!

IGDA Finland May Gathering

The winter's last cold breath was still to be felt lingering in the air as last May's Gathering took place at Cuba Café as usual, with a delightful 157 visitors present! We've seem to have attracted a nice number of new people to the event this time around, taking into account that a whopping 37 visitors were there for the very first time. Who knows, perhaps the wild rumours about free drink coupons sponsored by Digital Chocolate might have had something to do with that. [singlepic=455,320,240,,center]

Apart from the usual mingling and such, we had the good guys from Digital Chocolate present and they showed us a few of their brand new games, including Tower Bloxx Deluxe for the XBox Live Arcade and California Gold Rush for the iPhone. The 4 player Tower Bloxx setup seemed to be in a specially heavy use all night long, with hardly a moment without anyone eagerly on the controls.

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You can find the rest of the photos in the gallery by clicking here or via Flickr. And don't forget that the next Gathering is taking place at Cuba Café on the 9th of June, from 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm. Be there or be square!

NOTE: The June Gathering starts at 7:00 PM, instead of the 6:00 PM stated in this post earlier.