[1]Vancouver – I will be honest – in the weeks leading up to GDC Canada [1], I had my reservations about what type of event it would be. I had heard that not many people would be attending and that there would be very little in the way of exhibit 
[2]booths. I imagine that a large part was played by the current economy in keeping businesses and attendees away, but it didn’t take me very long once I had arrived at GDC Canada to feel that it was going to be a great event. Even though there wasn’t an abundance of exhibit booths, there was a good many people present – early estimates put the number at about double the attendance of 2008’s VIGS – the previous incarnation of GDC Canada.
The conference organizers – Think Services [3] and Reboot Communications [4], along with their staff, volunteers and the Advisory Board [5] are to be congratulated on a very good inaugural event. I feel that GDC Canada will continue to grow in the future, and I know that more than just a few of us are hoping to see more features added to next year’s conference – especially a Canadian version of the GDC Game Awards.
Overall, I think that Vancouver Digital Week has been thus far a great success. Today we will be dropping in on Digital Kung Fu [6] which is taking place at the Great Northern Way Campus, followed by the Wired Woman seminar about computer forensics [7]. I have loads of notes and photos to post from GDC and all of the accompanying events, but unfortunately it looks like I won’t have the time to do them all justice until tomorrow – but that just means you have more new and informative content from Village Gamer to look forward to.
I do want to send a shout-out to one of our regular readers whom I had the pleasure of meeting at GDC, so “Hi!” to Ryan Arndt from Certain Sound [8] – I hope you had a great time at GDC Canada, and thank you for letting me know that you find our site to be a useful source of information.