VideoBrains March Epilogue

To think I was panicking when I sold 65 tickets.

It turns out the seated capacity of Meltdown is still reasonable for our needs – although we are at Loading next month to test the video setup before June.

The event was excellent. My attendance worries from last month were entirely unfounded, although the press we got from Destructoid and Polygon probably helped out. Before we get started I’m going to mention you can support VideoBrains on Patreon. Sorry. 

Speaker Drop-Outs

So, my plan is to drop back to six speakers a month so there’s more social time. That’s convenient. I think 6 gives you a nice diverse mix of speakers without trying to fit in the extra 30 minutes that the 7th speaker takes up.

Thing is, since December I’ve had a speaker drop out each month. Either at the event or on the day of the event. That’s okay because real life happens – but because real life happens I don’t really see a way to plan around this. I guess the problem with hosting a monthly event is that it’s not viewed as a gigantic thing to bail out on. Again, life happens so I don’t know how to get around this fact, but I’m worried that if I drop back to scheduling just six talks then we could end up with five speakers every month.

This isn’t really what I want, and it’s not really fair on the guys that’ve bought tickets for a specific speaker and then shown up to the event to find out that they’re not actually there. I’m still looking into ways to resolve this.

Future Themes

So, when I said Hannah would be taking over as resident speaker from June – December I guess I kind of soft announced that we’d be hosting VideoBrains events until December. I guess if I’m going to commit to that it’s time I asked for more pitches.

I haven’t got solid dates ready just yet. But here’s some themes. Some are already full.

April: EasterBrains (Full)

May: Competition (Full)

June: The All Day VideoBrains/Evening Drinks (Full)

July Nottingham: NottsBrains (Full)

July London: Summer Holiday – Free pitching (Full)

I’d like to start accepting pitches for the below:

August: Show & Tell (Gaming brought into the real world. Bonus points if you have something you can actually show.)

September: Spy Party (Stealth and deception in games)

October: Dungeon Keeper. (I want to hear about bad guys. What makes a good bad guy? Which enemy is your least favourite?)

November: The Castle Doctrine (Your home is your fortress. Pitches about the role of home in games)

December: The Lost and the Damned (Hidden gems, forgotten games. Take a look back into the past.)

All pitches should be talks 15 minutes in length. Travel allowances can be discussed within the UK for the right pitch, and you should email me your pitches at Jake@VideoBrains.co.uk with the VideoBrains Pitch and the month in the topic.

Don’t feel you have ot be “someone” in the games industry, if you think you’ve got an interesting idea, I want to hear it.  Similarly, I’ve got a strong interest in talks from a variety of viewpoints, so please don’t feel put up if you feel like you might not have much to offer. Send an email anyway, we can talk through your ideas.