IGDA Elections – Chris Hood
February 15th, 2010 by Macguffin in UncategorizedIf you’re coming to this post without having seen the lead-in, you can find that post here. It links to all the other assessments I’ve posted. You can also find my disclaimer there – I’m on the Boston IGDA chapter’s board and support the candidacy of Darius Kazemi.
UPDATE – Mr. Hood stopped by and gave us some answers in the comments. I’ve placed them below.
As I’ve now seen with a number of other statements, Mr. Hood puts forth a number of high-level goals he’d like to accomplish, but doesn’t really get into how he’d accomplish them. Mr. Hood takes direct credit for reenergizing the IGDA in SoCal (“…I recently reenergized the IGDA in Southern California.”), but doesn’t lay out exactly what his role was in this.
Questions for Mr. Hood:
- Why run now?
- What exactly has your role been with the LA IGDA and its reboot?
- You lay out five high-level goals that you’d like to accomplish. Some of these, the IGDA is already doing (“Offer a way for professionals to find career opportunities and grow their experience”, “Supply a voice and increase visibility for the game industry to the national media.”) Can you tell us what you think the IGDA is and is not already doing well?
- Also, for your five goals, can you lay out specific things you would like to do to accomplish these goals?
- In response to the question of what you see as the biggest challenge facing game developers today, you responded, “money and work, public relations, quality of life for developers and growth of our industry.” Of these four things, which do you think is the most important? What specific steps would you like to see addressing that issue?
- What do you think the IGDA’s role in the industry-wide Quality of Life discussions should be?
- Do you think the IGDA’s dependence on studio sponsorships for money is a bad thing? If yes, what will you do to begin changing this? If no, why not?
From Mr. Hood:
“First, thanks Scott for putting this together. I think one of the keys to this election process is to get our candidates out in front of the members more, and with a recommendation I made to Joshua Caulfield, you’ll soon see a few more opportunities for the candidates and members to interact with questions and answers. I believe one of the concerns you have with the candidates statements is simply a lack of time and word count. I’m confident we’d all love to go into a great amount of detail about how goals and how we’d like to accomplish them, unfortunately, with a limit of 400 words, it’s quite difficult to outline everything. So again, with opportunities like this, we can share more and hopefully dive deeper into the concerns our members actually have. I’ll answer your questions in as much detail as I can below, but I would also invite anyone who is interested in contacting me personally to do so. I’m available for email or phone at any time.
In response to IGDA efforts in Southern California.
Over the last 2 years, the activity of the IGDA local chapters in Southern California have been greatly declining. In fact, over the last 2 years in Orange County alone, there was only one meeting. After coordinating chapter meetings in the DC Metro and Virginia area in 2008, I relocated to Southern California in 2009 and was disappointed to not see any activity. My stance was simple, it was unacceptable for our area not to be connecting on a regular basis. With no local network, I put an outline together for monthly IGDA meetings and in August 2009, IGDA Orange County relaunched with 50 people. Since then, under my coordination and leadership, the Orange County chapter now averages 150 members a month. We have had 7 straight monthly meetings and have seen signficant membership growth. With the success of the Orange County chapter, in December 2009, I began coordinating the efforts for the Los Angeles chapter to reboot and get back on track. In January 2010, uner my leadership and with the assistance of a passionate steering committee, the IGDA Los Angeles chapter restarted with a meeting that attracted 100 local professionals and students. My goal is to continue developing our local chapters not only in Southern California, but to find ways of strengthening and building our local video game communities everywhere.
Throughout rebuilding the local IGDA chapters in Southern California, my philosophy has always been “it just needs to happen.” We just need to get things done and do it. No one else was stepping up to the plate, so I just made the chapter meetings happen and I would like to continue making things happen for the IGDA. The IGDA is going through a lot of change right now, and I’m excited to be a part of it. I feel my background and experience would be helpful in the IGDA’s efforts moving forward over the next three years and I’m ready to help in the process. Joshua Caulfield is doing a great job in my opinion, and I’d love to work more closely with him and the other Board members to continue growing the IGDA.”
Tags: igda
February 15th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
First, thanks Scott for putting this together. I think one of the keys to this election process is to get our candidates out in front of the members more, and with a recommendation I made to Joshua Caulfield, you’ll soon see a few more opportunities for the candidates and members to interact with questions and answers. I believe one of the concerns you have with the candidates statements is simply a lack of time and word count. I’m confident we’d all love to go into a great amount of detail about how goals and how we’d like to accomplish them, unfortunately, with a limit of 400 words, it’s quite difficult to outline everything. So again, with opportunities like this, we can share more and hopefully dive deeper into the concerns our members actually have. I’ll answer your questions in as much detail as I can below, but I would also invite anyone who is interested in contacting me personally to do so. I’m available for email or phone at any time.
February 15th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
In response to IGDA efforts in Southern California.
Over the last 2 years, the activity of the IGDA local chapters in Southern California have been greatly declining. In fact, over the last 2 years in Orange County alone, there was only one meeting. After coordinating chapter meetings in the DC Metro and Virginia area in 2008, I relocated to Southern California in 2009 and was disappointed to not see any activity. My stance was simple, it was unacceptable for our area not to be connecting on a regular basis. With no local network, I put an outline together for monthly IGDA meetings and in August 2009, IGDA Orange County relaunched with 50 people. Since then, under my coordination and leadership, the Orange County chapter now averages 150 members a month. We have had 7 straight monthly meetings and have seen signficant membership growth. With the success of the Orange County chapter, in December 2009, I began coordinating the efforts for the Los Angeles chapter to reboot and get back on track. In January 2010, uner my leadership and with the assistance of a passionate steering committee, the IGDA Los Angeles chapter restarted with a meeting that attracted 100 local professionals and students. My goal is to continue developing our local chapters not only in Southern California, but to find ways of strengthening and building our local video game communities everywhere.
February 15th, 2010 at 9:17 pm
Throughout rebuilding the local IGDA chapters in Southern California, my philosophy has always been “it just needs to happen.” We just need to get things done and do it. No one else was stepping up to the plate, so I just made the chapter meetings happen and I would like to continue making things happen for the IGDA. The IGDA is going through a lot of change right now, and I’m excited to be a part of it. I feel my background and experience would be helpful in the IGDA’s efforts moving forward over the next three years and I’m ready to help in the process. Joshua Caulfield is doing a great job in my opinion, and I’d love to work more closely with him and the other Board members to continue growing the IGDA.