Networking at GDC

Last week, a friend and colleague posted the following question on LinkedIn, seeking advice:

I’ve been to two GDC’s in the past. The first was while I was employed full time at a studio, the second was as a curious onlooker.

In 2009, I’ll be attending my first GDC as full time freelance Game Designer/Writer-guy and although I think I’m pretty decent at networking, I’d love some good advice on how to make the most of my time there outside of reconnecting with current clients and touching base with ex-coworkers.

Thanks,
Ed

I ended up writing a somewhat lengthier response than I had intended.  By the time I was done I thought to myself, I ought to go ahead and put this up on my blog, in case it could be of use to anyone else.  My response references comments from two other people.  First, from David McGraw:

I’m sure this may ring a bell, but if not, Darius Kazemi has written a lot on networking in the game industry. He has a two part guide specifically oriented around the GDC ( http://tinysubversions.blogspot.com/2006/02/effective-networking-gdc-guide.html ).

From my perspective, the parties and events will be far and beyond the premium time to conduct networking. The IGDA party was probably my best night this year for networking. I had a chance to meet a lot of great people and I still keep in touch with some of them.

You SHOULD do networking while waiting for sessions to start, during breakfast/lunch, and during session breaks (people sitting next to you, round tables are really nice) and after (meeting with the presenters). As far as I’m concerned, this is just a warm up for the late night events. Your best time to shine will be through the events, by far. The people you run into in these sessions, will likely be at an event later. Good time to fill gaps if you didn’t get to talk to them enough/ask questions earlier.

My number one advice is to not spend too much time networking with people you know. Meet up with friends, hang out and enjoy yourselves, but once the GDC doors open, split. Focus on meeting random people having lunch or waiting for the session to start. Focus on talking with some presenters. Just be assertive.

And just have fun with it. Understand that people are naturally curious to an extent and they are interested in you and what you’ve done/doing.

Good luck!

I also appreciated this feedback from Noah Falstein:

Sadly, the “one central” bar advice is no longer true – since it came to San Francisco the GDC has not really had heart like the Fairmont Bar in SJ or the wonderful Santa Clara bar in the really good old days, when we complained that 1000 people was way too big… The Marriot bar on the 2nd floor was pretty good, but then last year it was being renovated or had already been phased out, I’ve forgotten. The W bar is too small. With 18,000+ people you just can’t have one central spot anyway, but there are LOTS of parties as well as the normal networking in the halls. Ed, I know you already have a lot of industry friends/connections, so certainly hitting the parties and bars and getting introduced by mutual friends can always work. Beyond that, one trick I would recommend is going to round tables where people who might hire you are likely to show up, and in the process of discussion mention who you are and what you do – then don’t be in a rush to leave, as you may well get someone who was lurking in the room come up to you and ask you for a business card. It can also work to ask a smart question in a larger lecture that serves to introduce yourself, but that is obviously harder to count on and can easily come across badly if you are not subtle about it.

Here’s what I had to say:

Ed,
There’s a lot of great advice here. I particularly think that Noah is right with a lot of what he says. I have to disagree a little bit with Mr. McGraw, however. When I was first getting into the industry, I found that the kind of “random, introduce yourself” networking that he describes is pretty-much your only option for beginning to build a network. And, to be fair, I still have great relationships with several people that I met that way.

Now, however, I have to recognize that such an approach is incredibly low-yield, for several reasons:

1. By its very nature, it’s “random.” This means that there it’s very unpredictable as to whether or not the people that you meet that way will really be of any use to you, or vice versa.
2. The more influential and experienced someone is, generally speaking, the less likely they are to be sitting alone at a table and/or randomly wandering the conference. They will likely be with friends, presenting, or in meetings.  So you are biasing your efforts toward people who have less experience and influence, and fewer connections.
3. These kinds of introductions bring no “context” with them. The person really doesn’t know “who you are,” aside from who you say you are or what your business card says, and the same is true in the other direction. You are not being introduced to them by someone that they know and respect and you come with no real “credibility.”
4. These kinds of conversations are usually very superficial, covering a standard set of questions (name, title, employer, titles shipped, current project, etc.). This “generic” factor tends to make them fairly forgettable. I can’t count the number of business cards that go straight into my trash can when I get back from GDC simply because I have no recollection of the person who gave them to me. (To avoid this, I recommend writing notes on people’s business cards if they say anything you think would be worth following-up on).

For all of these reasons, I think that you would be well-advised to focus on tapping your existing network as a way to get some valuable new connections. You’re not a college kid trying to break into the industry who doesn’t know anybody. You should be setting up time to reconnect with people like myself, Noah, Dave Grossman, Eric Nofsinger, Brenda Brathwaite, and anyone else that you’ve worked with since HVS. These are connected, respected, influential people (with the exception of myself, of course). Keeping these relationships strong is probably far more important than creating new ones.

I’m talking about more than just “reconnecting,” however.  These people will be able to provide introductions that will be much more likely to yield the kind of results that you’re looking for, because they don’t suffer from the shortcomings of the random intros that I listed above. Consider doing a little homework here on LinkedIn to see if any of the people that you know are connected to folks that you’d like an introduction to. If so, ask for it, and use GDC as an opportunity to meet THOSE people face-to-face. I spend hours setting up my GDC schedule in advance, and I try to leave as little blank time on my calendar as possible. That’s networking.

None of this is meant to imply that the random encounters, parties, group gatherings, and sessions aren’t worthwhile. I have never come away from GDC without some new and valuable connection that just kinda came out of nowhere. But I think that your most productive time, in the long-run, will be spent by tapping the network that you have already developed. Of course, that’s just my 2 cents, and you get what you pay for.

Hope to see you at the show!

Ben