In March I'll be heading to SXSW for the first time - I've heard about it for years and I have been looking for a chance to attend!  This seems to be the year for cool events lining up - we were invited to participate in the panel "ANYONE Can Create a Video Game!"

Hopefully some of you will be at SXSW as well - soaking in all the cool talks, parties, films, and music.  If so, be sure to let me know - we're thinking of organizing some kind of casual meetup at the event . . .

But don't worry if you can't make it in person - you won't miss a thing!  I will be brining SXSW to you - right here - detailing the highlights, happenings, talks, and tips!!

Here are some of the things I'm planning to check out while I'm there (and feel free to make some recommendations if there are things you'd like to hear about that I've missed in the list below):

• Randi Zuckerberg must have the coolest job in the world!  Utilizing the largest platform in the world to do great things!!  She is the Marketing Initiative and Non-Profit Manager at Facebook and will be speaking about the Haiti relief efforts and social responsibility on social networks - "Social Networks Drive Social Responsibility in Aiding Haiti"

• ScreenBurn at SXSW Game Design Competition Sponsored by USA Network - I'm going to check out this awesome indie Game Design Competition and maybe walk away with some cool ideas in prep for the Bay Area Game Jam.  Maybe some Wild Pockets developers will be entering this next year!  Here is some info if you are interested in participating next year.

• Keynotes - there are two great keynote speakers Danah Boyd and Daniel Ek, not specifically game focused, but hopefully we'll pick up some cool tips on adding to our own community as well as connecting Wild Pockets games into the Social Nets!

• The 13th Annual SXSW Interactive Web Awards - Celebrating the best new websites and online trends - can't wait to see what the most innovative sites out there are doing.  Hopefully some of the tips and tricks learned here can inspire us all and give us some great ideas for 2010

• Panels - here are just a few I think look cool and plan to stop in for: Community Management: Future Skills You'll Need to Know , How Sci-Fi Shapes the Internet, Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age,  With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: The Future of Video Games, The Era of Crowdsourcing: Guiding Principles,  All About the Browser, Baby!,  StoryCorps 2.0: Social Networking Meets Storytelling, Experimental Design: Your User Interface Is Your Laboratory

• Parties! Can't spend a whole day staring at screens without wanting to have some fun!!  Lots of events happening every night . . . if I have my flip maybe I will take some footage and put it up from the best of these :)  Not to mention the possible get together we may have!

• Films - I love indie films and film makers almost as much as I love indie games and game developers!!  I am going to have to find some time to sneak away from Interactive and possibly see a film or two and attend one or two of the panels.

Phew!  This is going to be a busy 4 days!!!  Can't wait . . .

Our Top 10 for 2009:

This has a been a busy year for Wild Pockets and we wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on some of the  most exciting things that came to be this year!

1. We launched the Wild Pockets platform into an open beta in March 2009!
2. The first complete games were built on Wild Pockets (including a well known title by Ninja Kiwi - SAS Zombie Assault 3D)
3. We held the first ever Bay Area Game Jam with Microsoft and Crispy Gamer (the awesome winning game built in 24 hours was Lava Ball)
4. We have watched our community grow moneth over month, and have had a chance to really get to know some of these amazing developers (we hit the 1000+ new registrations in a single month milestone this Nov)
5. The entire micro-transaction system and the Pocket Change virtual currency system were built and released for developers to begin using
6. We have had a blast getting to know and working alongside the SK Telecom Ventures team who led the Series A which closed this the spring (a very tough year to have closed on a Series A - we are extremely happy with this achievement!)
7. Our first customers bought pocket change for use in a Wild Pockets game
8. Our new web team came on board (and the new site is just about ready to launch!)
9. Some fantastic new features and tools came to be - Save/Load Functionality for games, Colored/Tinted Gui Objects Functionality, the Wild Pockets Model Viewer, backend support for scalability / transition to Amazon cluster, and much more
10. We have laid the foundation of our entire platform and eco-system so now we are moving on to the next stage - growing the community, adding polish and new features, and continuing to make it easier for anyone to make a great game.  And most important - we have had a lot of fun doing it!