Today was the first day of the Game Marketing Conference. I spoke on a panel entitled “Opening Up the Shop: Blogs, Forums and Developers”. It ended up being a lot of fun! Great questions from the audience, in general. Unfortunately, since I was actually on the panel, I didn’t record anything. Hopefully someone else blogged it!
Suffice to say, I argued vociferously for game developers and marketers to develop an open, honest relationship with the blogging community, and to support blogging within their own companies (as long as they make corporate policies clear to all employees, first.) There wasn’t much dispute with my fellow panelists, but a couple of audience members expressed concern about the dangers of engaging the “vocal minority” that so often makes itself heard in blogs and forums. IMO: you need to grow a thick skin, deal with those guys as graciously as you can, and keep communicating. Companies that abdicate online communities are giving a sustainable advantage to their competitors (who don’t).
Over the next couple of days, I’m going to post snippets of interest from conference sessions that I attended. That seems more useful (and fun) than simply posting entire transcripts like I normally do. Oh, and less likely to result in carpal tunnel. 😉
