Archive for category: Current & Past Events

GDC 2014 – San Francisco

Category: Corona, Current & Past Events, Events, RMC News     |     Tags: C#, Games, Mobile, Unity3D

GDC_banner_v1Game Developers Conference 2014

After years of consulting success, I am shifting goals for the next phase of my career.

I am now actively seeking a full-time position as a Unity3D Game Developer. 

I have deep experience in game development; more than 13 years of professional work. I absolutely live and breath gaming. I love it. I have much to offer my next team — everything from game concept creation and development, through to launch — and I am very excited! Here you can learn about my skills and experience ( RivelloMultimediaConsulting.com/forecast/ ) and contact me ( RivelloMultimediaConsulting.com/contact/ ) to setup a time to talk — before, during, or after GDC.

1. GDC Goals

  • Geek Out! – As a lifetime video game fantastic, I am incredibly psyched to see some great sessions about my favorite games of 2013/2014.
  • Promote New Opportunities — I am seeking a Unit3D Game Developer position. There are so many bright teams creating with passion and innovation.
  • Connect to the community — While American, I have worked internationally for many years.
  • Plug-in to the presenter-scene — I’d like to get a feel for who is talking, how, and about what subjects. My focus is mobile. And the mobile space, while growing, it is still marginalized at GDC. As an experience public speaker (360|Flex, Adobe Max, Adobe Camp Brazil, FlashForward, FITC, LA Games Summit, Montreal Game Summit, RIA Adventure Cruise, Rich Media Institute, … ) I would like to speak at GDC 2015 and Unite 2015 next year. There are some session I will attend — more to experience the speaker himself/herself than to see the content.

2. GDC Social Schedule

I’m excited to meet new contacts and reconnect with old friends during GDC. Outside of the conference sessions, I’m excite to block out time for more fun.

Are you hiring? Want to to talk about great video games? Or just explore amazing San Francisco?

Update: The event has ended. Thanks to all the great people I met.

Suggested Meeting Places GDC is huge and it can be hectic to meet on site. Here are a few nearby locations within walking distance of the event’s Mosocone Center. Note that 20,000 people attend GDC and everyone needs to eat. Long delays! Also, some of these businesses have multiple locations, so the address is included.

3. GDC Maps

GDC_Moscone_MAP_v1

Figure 1. Moscone Street Map

Figure 2. Moscone South Hall Map

Figure 2. Moscone South Hall Map

Figure 3. Moscone North Hall Map

Figure 3. Moscone North Hall Map

4. GDC Session Schedule

This year’s conference is full of great sessions about AAA and mobile gaming goodness. Here are some topics of special interest.

Web Security Question & Answer


DESCRIPTION:

I have a problem with web security!

I outsourced the creation of a simple website. A directory of Flash and Flex developers. Upon completion and launch 5 months ago, I now see warnings about security.

QUESTIONS – Please comment below the post!

  • Do you see a warning when you arrive on the site? If so, what is your OS and Browser & Browser version? Any clues?
  • What can I do to solve this problem?
  • Is the problem with the CODE on my website? or is the problem with my web-host (i.e. not MY code)?

LINK: Check it out!

  • The site with the security problem is here.

SCREENSHOTS

My PushButton Game Engine Article Mentioned on PBE Blog

My Adobe EDGE article about the PBE was mentioned on the PBE blogs. Cool!

Outsourcing To Paradise

“We want to create X but we can only afford to make Y”.

From Samuel Asher Rivello of RMC: …Or “How can we lower our current costs? Our current risks?” These are common conceptual starting points for considering outsource development in Software Development. For many companies the bottom financial line is most important. For others of us, there are other reasons to buck convention and think outside of our borders. I do not challenge the traditional reasons for outsourcing. Rather there are myriad resources about that. I offer some complimentary thoughts;

Non-Bottom-Line Reasons for Outsourcing Your Software Development

  1. Live In Paradise: Noone says your second office needs to be in a polluted city in North India. There are plenty of beautiful temperate mountain climates (Bogota, Cusco, Mendoza) and beach-side warm climates (Costa Rica, Panama, Brazil) that can make a great place to visit or stay long term as you expand. These locations have the people and infrastructure to support you.
  2. Challenge: There is a reason you didn’t stop at 5 employees, 100 clients, and a 6 figure net income. Challenge yourself. Meet new people, enjoy (and pull your hair out about) the legal differences worldwide
  3. Cultural Exchange: Targeting Latin America? Targeting Asia? Employees in those markets, at all levels of employment, can help you focus your product, service, and marketing to meet the needs of your audience.
  4. Access to World Class Capabilities: World class providers make extensive investments in technology, methodologies, and people.
  5. Benefits to Existing Employees: I’ve consulted with several companies who attract new employees and reward existing ones in the home offices with a 1 week ‘Paycation‘ each year. This new trend allows an interested employee to receive compensation to work a full or partial week from an exotic location. Employees get reinvigorated, but maintain productivity. This is more appropriate if you have a second office of your own, rather than just use a vendor in foreign soil, but it is a great ancillary expansion.
  6. Improve Company Focus: With your vendor executing tasks, you can free your current staff and mindshare to other things. Innovation, experimentation, R&D, more!
  7. Improve Your Personal Focus: Work less, experiment more. Bring more of your personality into the worksplace.

Whether your reasons are financial or otherwise here are some great resources to learn more about outsourcing. From Accelerance: In the Outsourcing in Paradise webinar Jim Tooley explains how his company calculated the total cost of developing software in Silicon Valley and in his company’s Indian center in Bangalore. The added cost of using programmers offshore was offset by the much lower cost of their salaries. It’s a similar calculation when outsourcing, actually simpler because you need to consider only the rates charged by the vendor without concerns for facilities and other G&A expenses.

To compute your total cost of outsourcing consider these factors:

  • Travel Costs – air fare, hotel, meals plus the indirect costs of travel time, jet lag recovery and time away from the office and home.
  • Requirements & Specifications – the time needed to create better documentation compared to direct and informal communication typically used with local programmers
  • Management Time – additional time needed to ensure milestones are achieved and communications are clear
  • Ramp-up Time – recruit and train the programming team
  • Attrition & Time to Replace Programmers – reflecting the competitive market for programmers and the ability to replace those that leave
  • Wage Inflation – the increase of cost over time (if any)
  • Exchange Rate Risk – if you are paying for your programmers in something other than dollars or your home country currency

Jim’s company was achieving cost savings with their offshore center in Bangalore. In their case the total cost of offshoring compared favorably to hiring programmers in Silicon Valley.

But there were several situations where the offshore programmers did not perform as well as expected. Jim’s conclusion was that the differences in physical distance, time zone and culture were a significant inhibitor of productivity when working on new software features using an Agile and collaborative approach.

As you will see in the webinar, Jim concluded that a nearshore approach was better suited to these situations. His goal was not to replace the Indian center but to use a new global location better suited to the kinds of programming assignments he needed to accomplish. And the alternative of hiring more programmers in Silicon Valley would be at a cost very difficult to get approved by management.

To get started quickly, Accelerance was able to give Jim a list of pre-qualified nearshore vendors that were experienced in Agile development and close in time zone. Very quickly he was able to discover that technical skills, English competency and cultural affinities were very strong.

However, the hourly costs were higher than India (and other places in the world).

Out came the spreadsheet and the total cost of nearshore outsourcing was computed. The reduced travel and excellent communication easily compensated for the higher hourly rates.

Another way to compare the cost of outsourcing to different programming vendors and to hiring your own programming employees, is to compute an average effectiveness or “efficacy” of a programmer in each team or location.

Jim concluded that the efficacy of the programming team in India was about half that of his Silicon Valley team. It’s not personal – efficacy is heavily influenced by the overall environment at each location and distances involved. The efficacy of the nearshore team in Costa Rica started at about three-quarters of the Silicon Valley team and improved quickly.

Are we saying that everyone should use nearshore outsourcing? No. As Jim acknowledges, they still do great things with their programmers in India. And of course there is great programming talent the many other countries in between!

Cost is one factor in making your decision. Just make sure you consider the total cost in selecting your outsourcing destination.

High Times For Flash Gaming

As a Flash Game Development professional, I’m incredibly excited to see major growth in the industry. While developers have employed the Flash Player for over 10 years, the past 2-3 years and in particular 2010 have brought major strides.

There are a dozen major, polished, quality, (non-pirating), Flash gaming sites and dozens of major venues for your Flash games. There has never been more work for Flash game developers.

Also…

Great Support For Games

Adobe’s EDGE Magazine has supported Gaming with a game series I’ve authored this year. 4 of the 5 articles have launched so far.

Flash Game Articles

  1. An introduction to developing games on the Adobe Flash Platform
  2. Deconstructing the zOMG MMO game from Gaia Online
  3. Developing physics-based games with Adobe Flash Professional
  4. Developing Flash Platform games with PushButton Engine
  5. Making Money With Flash Game Development (Release TBD)

Crowdsourcing Web Development

As part of an experiment and as part of research for a writing assignment, I am crowdsourcing a new web development project. “Crowdsourcing” is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call.

The nature of the work is not an area of strength, so it will be interesting to see how the process goes. I have listed this project on April 20th, 2010 only on Elance.com. I will update again following the completion of the project.

Here is the posting.

Adobe Flash and Flex Development in Brasil

I am coming to the end of 90 days in Brasil. I started at FlashCampBrasil in the smaller beach city of Maceio, Alagoas state in the north and will be exiting the country from Sao Paulo (SP) in the south. SP is massive and the hub of most business in the country, including Flash and Flex development.

I have worked with and met business leaders from major companies, major players, and have learned much.

I’ll be writing more thoughts soon;

  • Traveling in Brasil
  • Working in Brasil
  • Challenges of young tech companies in Brasil
  • Future of Flash and Flex in Brasil (Outsourcing, Crowdsourcing, Nearshoring)

January 2010 : My "Creating Augmented Reality w/ Adobe Flash CS4" Article Published in FFDMag!

DESCRIPTION: The fine people at Flash and Flex Developer Magazine (FFDMag) are as excited about Augmented Reality (AR) as I am. They have published my latest article about AR and Adobe Flash CS4. Augmented Reality involves the combination of the physical world and an interactive, 3-dimensional virtual world. This field of computer science is not new, but with recent advances in computing technology, thought provoking tech-demos and innovative consumer products using the technology are now bubbling up to mainstream audiences.

AUDIENCE: Developers, Designers, and business leaders who are interested in Augmented Reality.

LINKS

I'm attending "Scrum Training for Real-world Success" at RMI

TARGET FORMAT (Duration): 4 Hours

AGENDA: I will be an attendee at an RMI course on Scrum. Successful projects are critical to those of us in software and web development. They’re not only critical to our jobs and careers but our long-term personal lives. We all need our projects to work- and not just for our bosses, our companies and our clients but for ourselves and our families.

Scrum works- when you get the right training from the start. Let us train you in one of the most successful new ways of conducting successful projects in just 4-short hours. We guarantee you’ll learn and apply successful techniques and tools for creating Successful Scrum Projects! Not only that, you’ll get real-world first-hand experience in putting the theory to use!

Tony Wong has been leading software projects for over 14 years; he has made all the mistakes so that you do not have to. Using his project management technique, Tony has increased project manager productivity by 400% using Scrum. Tony will share with you the best of tips, tricks and real-world secrets for creating successful Scrum projects.

DATE

My Next Online-Only, Anytime Course is Here!

TOPIC: PureMVC & Flex RMI Online, On-Demand, Anytime Course Available!

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