Su Skerl and Kari Fraser (behind Brenda Bailey's laptop) at the WIGI Vancouver meeting June 25th

The Vancouver chapter of Women In Games International is preparing to host the Leadership Development Forum, a full-day track on leadership and development in the video game industry at Casual Connect, a casual game conference in Seattle. The conference, from the 21st to the 23rd of July, boasts an attendance of over 2000 of the casual game industry’s top people. The WIGI Van. day-long session on Monday July 20th will be the first event of the week before the main conference keynotes the following morning. The WIGI Van. group will also have a booth in the conference expo hall for the duration of the event with a mailing list sign-up sheet, information for women developers and gamers, and some cool goodies and giveaways.

Information about the Leadership Development Forum will go live on the Casual Connect website in the next few days. We are wrangling in the last of the speakers’ biographies and finalizing plans for the sessions and the mixer after. Yours truly will be part of a round table discussion about portfolio preparation for artists, or as we are calling it behind the scenes, “your portfolio repels jobs”. We will be discussing casual vs. hardcore portfolios, preparation strategies, as well as tips and techniques to show at your best. We will also be covering the creation of a personal brand and steps needed to maintain the strength of that brand. This session will be beneficial even to the experienced artist as we all can use refreshers on how to collect, present, and maintain a collection of work.

In other news the Vancouver chapter of the Women In Games International group is preparing to branch out into the first WIG group in Canada. These plans are on hold at the moment so that we can focus on making the first Leadership Development Forum at Casual Connect a memorable event.