GDC 2008 Schedule Builder is Sorta... Yay?
Now, I realize this could be construed as a bit of an ad for Game Developers Conference, but it's less that, and more a bit of a delighted yelp that the near-final version of the GDC 2008 scheduler went up on the site today, and it's definitely the most useful and usable version of the tool we've constructed thus far to sift through the gigantic heap of GDC lectures.
When you're dealing with such as massive conglomeration of lectures to pick from for the conf (which runs in San Francisco February 18th-22nd), it can be really tricky to build a schedule picker that has enough information on it but doesn't overwhelm - and allows flexible sorting and ordering.
Anyhow, there's still a few usability and functionality rough edges to be iterated on, but kudos to Ben Veechai and the Minnickweb folks who worked on this, since I believe that this year's Schedule Builder will pass 'the editor test' for the first time ever - Gamasutra editors are actually going to use it to schedule their time at the show. And those guys are tough to please, haw.
[Incidentally, now is as good a time as any to mention that the guest co-editor on GameSetWatch for the week of Game Developers Conference will be Andy Baio - best known for his super-intelligent tech blog Waxy.org weblog, creating the now Yahoo!-owned Upcoming.org, and, heh, discovering Star Wars Kid. He'll be attending the show and we'll be cross-posting some of his Waxy posts on GDC, since he has a really interesting outsider's/Web 2.0 view on the game biz.]
Comments
I was using this earlier this week and found it a little... underwhelming. I resorted to making an XLS with my schedule and I could format it how I wished instead of outputing an ugly list of lectures.
Posted by: Zack Hiwiller | February 7, 2008 6:38 PM
Fair enough. Not saying it's awesome yet, but boy, it's a lot more usable than it used to be.
Posted by: simonc | February 7, 2008 7:27 PM
I ran into a pretty nasty bug when trying to use it the other day.
If you add the "Fast Water Simulation for Games Using Height Fields", you can't delete it, and can't add any new talks. I'm pretty sure it's because of the u-with-an-umlaut in the speaker's name (Matthias Müller-Fischer).
Posted by: chris | February 7, 2008 8:09 PM
One big usability issue for me - you can only save a schedule if you've already bought a GDC pass. The company I work for has bought us passes, but I've no way to "prove" that to the system to allow me to register & save.
Posted by: dogbert | February 7, 2008 8:47 PM
I started using it last night, and eventually gave up. It's a nice idea, but I can't actually view the details of the lectures within the event planner.
I have a press pass, but no GDC site login. I can't get a GDC site login without buying a pass.
One possible improvement - can it output the plan to iCal, so it can be viewed through Google Calendar?
Posted by: Tim E | February 8, 2008 4:02 AM
Tim, I think you can view lecture details by clicking on the name of the lecture?
I'm passing on these other comments (particularly the Muller-Fischer one!) to our trusty staff.
Posted by: simonc | February 8, 2008 6:38 AM
A few years ago they had the perfect schedule builder. You could easily browse the talks, it saved your data, it had 1st/2nd choice, etc. I never understood why they tried to make a new one. No builder since has been half as good.
Posted by: brad m | February 8, 2008 6:53 AM
Simon,
If you don't have a myGDC login (which you don't get if you're on a presspass) you can only view the lectures once they've been added to the schedule window at the bottom . The clickthrough from the lecture title in the schedule takes you to myGDC page, which I can't access.
It's not a big problem, and I've klutzed my way around it. :)
Posted by: Tim E | February 8, 2008 6:59 AM
Yeah, it's the best one so far, but it's still far from very useful :-(
It's pretty slow and not good and answering questions like what's going on Wednesday afternoon. It's also hard to see what overlaps, what gaps I have in my schedule, etc because it doesn't show a graphical table representation (as far as I can see anyway).
Frankly, I would have loved it if it had been made available as a public Google Calendar (one for each track maybe). That way you can have the global (or detailed) view you want and easily copy events to my own calendar. Any chance of that for next year?
Posted by: Noel Llopis | February 8, 2008 7:42 AM
A public Google Calendar is a really good idea, I think. I'll pass that along.
Posted by: simonc | February 8, 2008 9:57 AM
Public google calendar is *exactly* what we need. Then it would be easily viewable right on top of all of our staff schedules.
I found for ages to get registered on mygdc and try to use the export functionality. Site denies I'm even registered for GDC at all which is amusing.
Frustrating. It's a complete pain to try schedule our own meetings around the sessions.
Posted by: Mat Bettinson | March 11, 2009 6:57 PM