Workshop 1
Learn to Network: Your Career Depends on it
Speaker: Josh Beedle
Room: LS 101
Outcomes:
Students gain a foundational understanding of networking strategies with a hands-on exercise and how to apply them right now as students and into their careers.
Summary: Networking in the game industry is one of the most vital areas for career growth, but it can be daunting and create feelings of uncertainty. Even worse, networking ineffectively can result in missed opportunities. In this workshop, you will gain a foundational understanding of networking strategies with a hands-on exercise that will help you navigate the most difficult and awkward social situations. This workshop will teach you how to apply these strategies right now as a student, and will be a resource throughout your career so opportunities arise more often and career goals become a reality.
Workshop 3
T-Shaped Game Designers: Find and Explore Your Focus
Speaker: Tri Nguyen
Room: LS 111
Outcomes:
Students will find their design specialization, and explore it with an industry-level game design test.
Summary: The game industry is looking for T-Shaped designers, which are people that have both a wide breadth of knowledge and expert experience in a particular specialization. However, finding your focus can be super overwhelming because design is such a huge field. In this workshop, you’ll learn about the different methods of finding your specialization and doing a deep dive on what certain design disciplines require. Afterwards, you will take an industry-standard design test, which will help you explore that specialization.
Workshop 2
So You Want to be a Writer… Now What?
Speaker: Lauren Mee
Room: LS 107
Outcomes:
Students will learn about how to succeed as a game writer, and practice pitching and communicating ideas.
Summary: So, you think you might want to be a videogame writer, but have no idea what that means or what to do next…? Well then this workshop is perfect for you! I’ll walk through the stages of becoming a game writer with tips and tricks that I wish I knew when I first started. Afterwards, we’ll practice pitching and presenting ideas, and how to iterate upon them based on your team’s feedback.
Workshop 4
Conquering the Whiteboard(s) : Practical Career and Tech Tips for Game Engineers
Speaker: Garin Richards
Room: AEB 306
Outcomes:
Students will walk away with valuable insight on starting a career in Game Engineering. From preparing for the phone interview to navigating the code base on your first week.
Summary: This workshop will cover the pain points of an engineer’s junior career and arm students with the resources and practices to succeed. It will cover topics such as technical tests, practical networking tips, portfolio review, and healthy developer practices. Students will discover what type of engineer they are and learn that where you want to work is just as important as what you want to work on.