GDC2007: The Pedantic Stats Post

I was inspired by a post by Mark Deloura about his trip to to DICE in which he tracked stats about how he was spending his time. I decided to do the same at GDC. I carried a little notepad with me and made a few tickmarks about how I spent my time over the course of the week. Here are the details:

Over 5 days, I met & had conversations (I counted anything beyond a 2 minute discussion as a 'conversation') with 232 people.

108 of those were people I already knew, and 124 of those were people I met for the first time (or didn't recall meeting previously). I had 22 meetings with developers/publishers (more on this in a later post)

The 5 days were pretty much 8am to midnight (or much later) every day, so roughly 80 hours. Of that, I spent 22 hours in meetings, 3 hours presenting and/or panels, 8 hours preparing for sessions, and 7 hours attending sessions. I slept 21 hours over 5 nights, which pretty much explains how I felt Saturday morning, and also why I caught a cold that followed me home.

I spent 4 hours at parties. Pretty conservative compared to past years. I logged another 4 at the CMP suite, which given the caliber of conversation was arguably a productive use of time, at least I think it was, but I'm a little foggy. :-/

OK, so what did I learn from my scribbles? First off, I hope that I do the same next year and can use it as a benchmark of sorts. Second, I either need to attend more sessions, or share my pass with someone. I had a speaker pass, so it didn't cost me anything, but still, I didn't get much use out of it. Finally, time spent prepping for sessions was ineffective, and should have been done ahead of time. Part of this was thrust upon me fairly late in the days leading up to GDC. Still though, that 8 hours could have been spent doing business or doing general elbow-rubbing.

Next year, I have to carry a pedometer with me so I can measure my TFF.