In March 04, for reasons I still don't fully comprehend, I was invited by a net friend to go all the way to Melbourne (Australia) and speak to a seminar about the mod I worked on.
The seminar was part of an independent game developers conference called Free Play, in turn part of the wider Melbourne arts festival called Next Wave. When I heard the offer I started all the metal processes to dismiss the idea as too expensive/too far/too wild and then suddenly overode that and decided to quit playing safe for once in my life. In an explosion of recklessness and disposable income I bought a plane ticket and went and had an adventure. This isn't the story of that adventure.
I keep meaning to write all that up in some kind of travelogue but every time I sit down to record it, it still seems too big and I can't find the words.
I was a little bit unsure of what the seminar was supposed to be, other than the title, “Managing a Mod Project”. It still seems a bit presumptious of me to take that mantle on, as mentioned elsewhere on this site my 'management' role of the single mod I've worked on consisted of overseeing the last deperate attempts to finish the first part of the first episode of The Cassandra Project. On the other hand when it comes to cataloguing mistakes to be learned from, I decided I probably had enough experience to do that well enough. And as I said, I was due an adventure.
I did know that I might be doing it panel-style but that was still unconfirmed when the date rolled around to get on the plane. To be on the safe side I wrote some notes and made up some slides as if I was going to give the entire 20 minute presentation by myself.
In reality it turned out very differently. I was near-paralysed with nerves about public speaking exacerbated by the kind of jetlag that you can only get by travelling as far as you can without leaving earth orbit. My co-speaker, none other than Damian Scott, one of the original Team Fortress team, came to my rescue by being a university lecturer who, as he put it, talked shit for a living. He carried my ass all the way through the entire experience for which I'll be eternally grateful, even though it turned out to be not nearly as terrifying as I imagined.
So the presentation never got presented and I found it sulking on my hard drive the other day. I've tidied it up a bit to be more suited to reading straight and edited out some of the more inane margin notes.