Professional Development Conference

Greetings Viewer!,

My name is Audrey "Danielle" Talley and I am the founder and president of the Carolina Gamers Club, the only student organization at the University of South Carolina dedicated to game design and development. I started this club last Fall in hopes to promote socialization through gaming and facilitate game development at our university. We divide members into game design teams based on their talents and interests (like art, programming, music, etc.) and, throughout the semester, they work together to produce a video game. As a club, we also host workshops and lectures that teach how to create games in Unity!

Though I didn't expect a large turnout, my expectations have been greatly exceeded! Our attendance is usually about 40 people per meeting, which rivals the largest organizations at our university. We currently have four game design teams chugging away at their own unique games! They've put in countless hours outside of our weekly meetings to put these games together and I couldn't be more proud of them!

As a reward for their hard work, I would love to send the team leads and a few officers to the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, California! This would be a great experience for the team leads to get insight into the video game industry and they can apply the tools they learn and resources they acquire to create even better games next semester! Most importantly, this will pave the way for the teams to participate in the Independent Games Festival at GDC next year!

We have acquired some funding from our Student Government as well as 7 expo passes generously donated by Speed Tree (IDV), but we are still about $4,500 short of our goal. The GDV Expo is from March 16th - 18th.  Here is an outline of our budget:

Hotel
>Cost Per Night: $300.00
>Number of Rooms: 3
>Number of Nights:  3
>Total: $2,700.00
Tickets
>Cost: $250.00
>Quantity : 10
>Total: $2,500.00
Flight
>Cost: $500.00
>Quantity: 10
>Total: $5,000.00
Grand Total: $10,200

Acquired Funding
>Hotel: $1,800.00
>Flight: $1,350.00
>Tickets: $2,500.00
Acquired Total: $5,650.00

Amount Needed
$10,200.00 - $5,650.00 = $4,550.00

Since the conference is coming up quickly, we will be collecting funding until March 1st. The game design teams have done such hard work this year, please help me reward them with the trip they so desperately deserve and help us make U of SC and South Carolina a game development hub! 

Sincerely,

A. Danielle Talley
B.S.E. Computer Engineering 2017 | U of SC
Carolina Gamers Club | Founder & President
Undergraduate Researcher | Dept. of Mathematics

For more information about GDC, please click here .
For more information about the Carolina Gamers Club, please click here.
For more information about myself, please click here .