Today Elbert Perez who works for Microsoft and is also an Indie Game designer at OccasionalGamer.com joined us at Full Sail as a guest speaker. He had a lot of great information to share with us about getting into the gaming industry. He is a well-respected alumni of Full Sail who graduated in 2005 and has had an illustrious career in the gaming industry. As an Indie Game creator who has over 2 million game downloads under his belt, he had a lot to speak about in the Indie Game industry. He shared with us his experiences of getting his games published and the pros and cons of the different methods. The thing that always sticks out when these greats of the industry come in and speak is, NETWORKING! I have yet to hear one person who is in the industry say they just filled out an application and they got the job. Every person has said they got to where they are due to who they knew prior to the job. So, I will continue to network and hopefully in 3 years I will have a great Rolodex of some of the most amazing people in the industry.

The thing I love the most about these guest speakers and Q&A sessions that Full Sail hosts, is that we get to see the direct results of our efforts in action. Most of the speakers I have seen have been Full Sail alumni or they got their degree in something similar. It really inspires me to see these people come and give back to Full Sail, not just for the love of the school, but for the love of the students who are in the very seats they sat in just a few years ago. It shows us that we CAN do it, and we CAN be just like them and in hopefully a few years after graduating we can be a guest speaker that the new students of the future will want to come see.

Thanks to Elbert Perez and Rob Coble for doing this for us!