Finland to be the first chapter of International Game Developers Association (IGDA) to formalize outside North America

IGDA Finland is proud to be the first IGDA chapter outside North America to formalize as a legal entity. IGDA Finland has registered as an association under the Finnish law and its relationship with main IGDA in United States will be governed by a contract signed in September 2012 between the parties. How to become a member or renew your membership? Here! Here!

IGDA Finland will remain an official part of the international IGDA family and members of IGDA Finland will enjoy the full membership benefits. This new arrangement enables IGDA Finland to better serve the interests of the local IGDA members in Finland. This also means that more of the membership fees can be directed to better cater local needs.

As the first actions, IGDA Finland will start expanding its service offering beyond Helsinki. IGDA Finland wants to provide support to game developers across Finland. The first step is to build a network of IGDA Finland Student Club initiatives across the region.

“IGDA Finland wants to facilitate the exchange of ideas and best practices, help new talent to get into the local industry as well as attract foreign talent to Finland. With Student Clubs we are able to drive regional development, support local game development hubs across Finland and promote entrepreneurship”, states Sonja Ängeslevä, the first Chair of the IGDA Finland association.

IGDA Finland ry works closely together with Pelikehittäjät ry (Finnish Game developer Companies association) and Neogames Finland ry, to form Finnish Game Cluster which aims to help the Finnish game development business to develop and grow. The cluster aims to push Finnish game industry to it's present state to be even greater economical value. Finnnish games industry aims to be billion € industry by 2020.

For more information on IGDA Finland and details on how to become a member, please visit http://www.igda.fi.

Contact: IGDA Finland ry Chair: Sonja Ängeslevä Sonja.Angesleva@igda.fi Tel. +358 400 759 817

IGDA Finland ry is a legally registered association under the Finnish law. The mission of IGDA Finland is to promote the development of careers and professional skills of individual game developers (and individuals of related industries) based in Finland, and to further develop the international recognition of the Finnish game developer community.

International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is the largest non-profit membership organization serving individuals who create video games. IGDA advances the careers and enhances the lives of game developers by connecting members with their peers, promoting professional development, and advocating on issues that affect the developer community. These core activities advance games as a medium—and game development as a profession.

Web update this weekend

Just to let all of you know, IGDA Finland's web crew is rolling out some technical site updates this weekend. Hopefully everything will be smooth, but even if something goes horribly wrong, we at least warned you beforehand. In any case, should you encounter any problems with the site after this week, let us know at webmaster at igda dot fi or just drop us a comment on this post. :)

Highlight: IGDA Finland Linkedin group

Hello everyone, it's time for yet another feature highlight! Since all of you already belong to our IGDA Finland Facebook group (right?) it probably doesn't come as a shocker that we decided to found a similar group to Linkedin, a terrific networking service centered around our business lives. Being a member of this group not only increases your sex appeal but voices support for the Finnish developer community globally.

Here at IGDA Finland we are dedicated to serving you the best possible IGDA chapter and would like you to join in and keep Finland in the world map!

Feature highlight: iPhone compatibility

It's time to highlight something we made just for you iDevice owners out there!

If you point your iPhone/iPod Touch browser to igda.fi, it will give you a customized version of the site for low bandwidth connections and touch screen UI. From there you can easily browse the newest updates at a glance without spending the whole day downloading our full site's features. Of course you can always choose to view the full instead by clicking the "normal view" link at the bottom of the page.

Do you like the feature? Please give us some feedback on the comments! :)

Coordinator Responsibilities for 2008-2009 Season

Our 'About Us' -page has been updated to reflect our current organization and responsibilities, including an organization chart of how we have structured our coordinator team for this season. Basically we've formalized the split of responsibilites a little more than previously. For our most important areas of events and the website, we've also tried to form partnerships where two coordinators always work closely together, able to cover for the other one if they get sick or something.

Sonja and Vesku take care of all events, where Sonja takes care of the more over arching stuff and Vesku handles the concrete details. Vesku also coordinates the efforts of our sizable volunteer pool.

Miikka and Teemu handle the website. Miikka acts as the Editor-in-Chief and is responsible for all the content, Teemu concentrates more on the backend technical stuff but is also responsible for the visual looks. Juho is our new webmaster and Teemu's right hand man. He is also the hand and eye behind our current logo. Teemu and Juho are helped by the volunteeers of the web team and Miikka has been putting together a group of volunteer to act as the content team.

Whereas Sonja, Vesku, Miikka and Teemu concentrate on the ongoing activities of our chapter, Mats takes care of our 'one-of' projects. These are initiatives that actually have a 'finish date'. Right now he is concentrating on getting the chapter team new chapter t-shirts and updating our out-of-date banner.

As the lead coordinator, I try to help out where I can. :)

- Jay Lead Coordinator