San Francisco, CA-Part 1

This week, I'm in beautiful San Francisco, California.

I wish this were my picture ; )

I've traveled to the other coast to attend the Game Developer Conference (GDC).  This is the single largest gathering of professional game developers, in the world.  

There around about 25,000 people at this conference - from the various disciplines in game development (animation, programming, audio, business, marketing, etc).  For me, this is the umpteenth GDC that I've attended.  It's a great chance to schmooze, meet directly with developers, share new technology and catch-up with friends in the industry.  After working for 20 years in games, I run into a lot of colleagues.

I'm staying right in the heart of SF, at the Westin St. Francis hotel:

View of St. Francis from Union Square

This hotel, along with several others, is located right next to Union Square - which is a nice little oasis in the heart of SF.  

That's the hotel, next to the Square.  Picture taken from Macy's

Union Square is particularly fun at Christmas-time with decorations, performances and great stores (Macy's, Nordstroms, Nike Town, H&M) connected to the square.

My first day here started with meetings.  Not a big surprise there, as this is what I'll be doing for most of the week.  This meeting was with the organizers of GDC.  We talked about what would make the conference better, and what we might do together at the other GDC shows around the world (GDC Europe, GDC China, etc).  The person that runs the conference is an old employee of mine.  She's just great and it was fun to catch up.

The hilight of the day was dinner.  It was a gathering of industry folks for the PC Gaming Alliance.  We held the dinner at a famous SF restaurant called The House of Prime Rib.  Any guesses as to what they serve?  

They call this the "Henry VIII" cut

As a true carnivore, it was AWESOME.  I will have to walk about 5 miles tonight to work that cut of prime rib off ; )

I've now been up for 22 hours, so it's time to get a few hours of sleep before attending an interesting summit meeting tomorrow.