I'm heading to GDC next week. I went through the schedule, planning on mostly mobile games sessions mon/tue and Game Design/Economics wed-fri. Any tips? How much time do I need to plan for the expo/other stuff? Only been to wwdc before.
It all depends on what your priorities are. You could fill your entire week just with business meetings or sessions or parties. The expo floor only really warrants an hour or two in my opinion, I would dedicate my time to attending sessions and generally meeting and networking with people!
I'd suggest to limit the time you plan to spend in the expo. Only a little of it will be relevant, and most of the information presented can be found online anyway. Be careful of so called "sponsored sessions" as these often end up just being sales pitches for the tech or service in question with little objective content. Sessions which are post mortems and analysing critical/financial/ performance of games usually have good advice/knowledge you can come away with, as they are based on actual practical experience rather than theory and often give you interesting data points that you can benchmark against. Make sure you network like crazy, whether at the show, after talks, or at parties. Making contacts can be very valuable down the track and can open up opportunities with outsourcing, collaboration, media coverage, cross promotion, and publishing.
