As I confessed in my
apology for how I mishandled certain aspects of AGDQ 2017, I did an abysmal job of properly supporting the rest of the members on the TASBot team in certain areas that led to dissatisfaction and ultimately led to some discontinuing further work on GDQ events. I made serious mistakes in areas including attribution, commentary, and general time management that resulted in hurt feelings that I was honestly oblivious to at the time. When I finally understood the depth of the problem I was immediately emotionally impacted and remorseful (I even started going to counseling for the first time in my life last week). I would like to again take an opportunity to apologize to those who felt slighted either through lack of attribution or due to my time management failures at the event itself, and I would like to start taking steps to move forward.
For my part, I do not plan to lead a major GDQ event any time soon - specifically, I do not intend to organize a major effort for AGDQ 2018, although I may provide analysis in-between runs at SGDQ 2017. In addition to needing time to re-assess how I would lead these types of efforts in the future, one of my primary reasons for this is I need to take some time to re-focus on my wife and kids. They did not get the priority I should have given them over the last three years and I'm re-learning how to put their needs first.
Having said all of that, I have at least one major commitment that was per-arranged prior to AGDQ 2017 - namely, I had committed to being a
keynote speaker at Thotcon in May 2017 delivering much the same presentation that
I gave at GeekPwn. That talk will not involve a major development cycle so I am willing to keep that commitment as it will not be anything near the burden that past GDQ events have been on my family. Another opportunity recently came up that is in the same class of required work - namely, I've been asked if I would consider being part of the March 17-19
Californithon charity speedrun marathon benefiting
Direct Relief. The event is less than two hours from where I live and thus would constitute a day trip that I could likely handle without negatively impacting my family.
I have not yet committed to being a part of Californithon but I would likely show
[3243] N64 Mario Kart 64 by Weatherton in 20:33.32 with pre-rehearsed commentary and full attribution (minimizing my name and ensuring the authors are given full credit). I would possibly also show something we were unable to show at AGDQ 2017 but had otherwise prepared, again with full attribution; it would involve the same payload but with different content and thus would stray into demoscene territory somewhat.
I would like to seek counsel here. How do you (yes, you, reader of this post) feel I should proceed? Should I not go to Californithon at all to allow all of us including myself more time to process and recover? Should I take the opportunity to fix the "you only show demoscene content" complaints by showing just Weatherton's run (or a similar "traditional TAS"), thus sticking to our roots but not taking an opportunity to highlight the work of other members of the site? Should I show Weatherton's run and also the previously unseen run via the AGDQ 2017 payload method to cover the most broad range of content I have readily available and provide more time for proper attribution including a full credit roll?
I am at an admittedly fragile place - I really, really want to take this fantastic opportunity that has presented itself to attempt to right the wrongs of attribution I erred in but I don't want to cause further damage. I have until the end of the day on the 31st (i.e. about 24 hours) to make a decision on whether to attend at all and I have a week or two more to decide what to show if I commit to going. I greatly appreciate any feedback you have on a "going forward" perspective (if you have feedback on AGDQ 2017 itself,
please use that feedback thread instead). Thank you in advance for the support!
Update: After discussing with my family
we've decided to all go together.
