In the next two months, I was under the impression that there were two game-related conferences that were happening in Texas.

Austin Game Conference on September 6-8.

Flashforward Austin on September 11-14.

Well it turns out that one was sneaking in right under my nose.

Texas Independent Game Conference on July 22-23.

Now then, Austin's a pretty easy drive from here, but it's 3 1/2 hours, so it's certainly not trivial. And I have to get a hotel room, so the decision to go isn't exactly as much of a no-brainer as it would be if the conference was in D/FW.

I'd been to the AGC about three times now. It's okay, but it still pales in comparison to the GDC. I'm about 102% burned out on seminars, and I have enough pens. So basically I'll go to help out gamedev a bit with press, but I'm burned out on that too. All in all, it's just becoming something that costs me a lot of money without much benefit.

I always manage to get SOMETHING out of it. The ASP and casual games panel at the last AGC was pretty good, and Maggie always loves the freebies, but I feel that, with the avenues for advice available on the web and elsewhere, it's not worth the cost.

Right now I'm giving strongest consideration to attending Flashforward, just because I've never attended a Flash conference before. Could be fun.