Brain of James

When moving to a new city, what’s your plan for meeting new people and engaging the local creative community? There are international networks like Pecha Kucha, Dr. Sketchy’s,the various BarCamps and other gatherings of interesting folk.

But if you dropped into a city and found none of those things or more likely, a small town where the critical mass just didn’t exist, what would you do? What kind of seeds do you use to grow a community where none was present?

There’s a fuzzy line between finding interesting people to talk to, colloborate with and drink and have good times with and the weird clinginess that comes from typical student/amateur groups. Achieving one and dodging the other seems to be a case of using the tried and tested invite and introduce method vs. broadcasting for participation.

(Brainbits is my new tag for loose thoughts I want to collect before they completely slip by me. ((edit: Was brainjuice, but I noticed Mr. Ellis using it, odds are good he’s prior on that particular turn of phrase.))

Derek Yu provides a genius write up of the Indie Game Maker Rant.

With roughly 1 minute remaining, Petri stands up and beats on the keyboard like the drummer on a Nordic slave ship. Even though we’re indoors, a warm breeze somehow makes its way into the room and unravels his ponytail, sending his flaxen hair waving as Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries is pumped in through Moscone’s humble speakers.

It only gets better when you read the whole description of Petri’s 5 minutes of madness. The indies, as represted by Polytron/Infinite Ammo/rest of the TIGsource crew, keep making me consider diving headfirst into the path of that particular train. I wonder what Heather’s rant was about…