Greg Lobanov

All I can say is if you're gonna do the meetup hustle and inject yourself into a convo that people you think are famous are having - be cool. Probably listen a lot. Do not ever pull out your portfolio. (that comes after you trade business cards in the "was fun to meet!" email)

All that said, seriously: Your peers will be famous someday. You don't know which one will have a hit game in 5 years. I met @ZhenghuaYang way back, now he runs an indie outfit with TONS of potential. I knew @unormal back when we both saw Qud as a longshot. Make many friends!

Also, organize a community! You don't gotta be famous to do that. I wasn't. I'm the one who nursed CiGDA, the Colorado indie dev group, into something p. big. Got it handed to me when the OG organizer left in its infancy, and I just ran meetups. Almost no one came. Keep trying!

I also ran the SomethingAwful gamedev for, what, eight years? We did a fun thing the first year, sorta fell apart year 2, then I took it on cus I didn't wanna see it die. You meet people as an organizer. It's a cool way to network if you're completely shy, cus you have a focus.

That was the hardest one to give up, but I was too busy, and thank God - they kept it going! Now there's a group who runs SA GameDev. Way more resilient, don't have a single person point of failure, and they have the manpower to do more cool shit with it. Like the Gong Show!

And last I saw, CiGDA had turned into The chapter for IDGA in CO, finally (they had a power struggle with a dude who had been squatting it for years), and now they also have lots of people helping and just, good deal! Letting go is important. Let new blood in. They'll do better.

(and please nobody say either of those died cus I love them and want to just imagine they're gonna run forever dangit) (But deffo tell me if you know they're still doing great)