From IGDA.org: The International Game Developers Association Leadership Summit commenced late last Tuesday at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center in Seattle, Washington (US). Since many of the Summit’s attendees had been involved in either PAX Dev or PAX Prime in the days prior, this event presented a nice second chance for additional professional development, and to do some off the clock socializing with industry peers.
The 2015 Leadership Summit is a new iteration of the IGDA’s previous Leadership Forum events that proved very popular when conducted 2007 through 2011. The event is intended to help attendees improve their leadership skills in all areas, not only as company leaders or in management roles but also from the perspective of exhibiting creative leadership.
The conference kicked off on Tuesday night, featuring the IGDA Seattle chapter’s latest recruiting event, in additional to light networking for both the recruiting event and Summit attendees. A wide variety of developers attended, ranging from owners of serious games one-man studios to directors of AAA powerhouses. One attendee, Swatee Surve, was excitedly promoting her predictive healthcare application. “The next big trend in gaming is prescribed mental healthcare,” Surve noted, painting a picture of the future were psychiatrists use games to discern the needs of patients, like in Ender’s Game. Another group of attendees were Universe Builders Studios, who were in process of developing a space startup simulator so entrepreneurs could plan the harvesting of planetary resources. “Neil Degrass Tyson made science cool. We want to be cool, too,” they said.
Read the complete summit overview at IGDA.org!
