Acronym

Ugh, I'm just getting back to my hotel room, and it's past 11pm! Where did the day go? Once again, opting for the condensed summary...

Day 2 of the "big show". Shoot me now. Please, just shoot me.

David Cooperider had a lot of important/inspiring stuff to say. Odd, though, his delivery was off. He was visibly nervous, lost his thoughts several times, fumbled with the clicker, etc. It was a real disconnect for someone involved in such important and far reaching work. Aside from all the social good bits, I'm going to do some research on his appreciative inquiry model purely as a large group facilitation process...

After the general session, I hit the expo floor. What the heck is the crazy big red chair all about? Had a nice lunch chat with Ben Martin, who ate the cheese steak sandwiches kindly provided by the Philly booth. And, had to run off the floor to do a quick interview on game industry career prospects with the Wall Street Journal...

As noted earlier, Douglass Rushkoff's thought leader session was amazingly awesome. Oddly, his anti-corporate angle was in complete contrast to Cooperider's "business will save the world" message. I even got up and asked him to comment on the corporate social responsibility mega-trend. He quickly replied that it was all BS and that corporations are programmed to make profit and it is unethical for them to do anything but.

Despite Rushkoff's overly negative tone, I still found his words/ideas more inspiring (and much better delivered) than Cooperider, as a association executive. The whole idea that associations have to be the place were the geeks can be geeks and love "the thing", and as a place that generates and rewards social capital, etc, was particularly meaningful.

For the afternoon's learning labs, I attended the session on chapter conflict and another on creating fierce volunteers. The conflict session was more theoretical than expected, but still very useful/helpful. The case format of the volunteer session fell flat and didn't provide much take-away value.

After the day full of sessions, I bailed on all the ASAE activities and connected with a handful of local members (ie, game developers) running the IGDA's chapter in Chicago:

Here's a shot of Alexander Seropian (Wideload Games) and Denny Thorley (Day 1 Studios). Trivia snippet: Alexander is the founder of Bungie Studios, the creators of the massive hit Halo. After selling his studio to Microsoft a few years ago he moved back to Chicago.

Carrie Fowler (Electronic Arts) and Eugene Jarvis (Raw Thrills). Trivia snippet: Eugene is one of the elder statesmen of the game industry, having created such arcade classics as Defender, Robotron and Smash TV. The IGDA presented him with a lifetime achievement award a few years back.

Admittedly, it was nice to break loose from McCormick Place and connect with some of my peeps :)