My quest to break into the industry: XNA Developer Group meeting

Last night I attended my first XNA Developers Group meeting at SMU Guildhall.  I haven't attended a game related meeting/event since I presented my paper at SIGGRAPH back in 06, so I was really excited about this.  Also I met most of the guys in the Ad-Lib game group, one of which, Rick, was the presenter.   

The presentation for the meeting was over finite state machines, but Rick spent far more time discussing the different types of collection data structures in C# than the actual implementation of a state machine.  That was cool in its own, because he discussed several types, like LinkedList and Collection that I haven't really used before, and also discussed them all in terms of performance. 

I'm really excited about the Ad-Lib group.  It seems we have an interesting collection of talents instead of all programmers.  We have a meeting Wed night to discuss the next game jam. 

In other news, I'm going to try to apply to my first job in the next few weeks.  At the meeting Rick said that GearBox was really ramping up their hiring this year, and I've looked at some of the jobs on their site and I think I could qualify enough for them to get me in the door for an interview. 

I'm specifically looking at the Tools and UI Programmer position.  It seems the most entry level, and it also desires some C# knowledge, which I definitely have.I'll need to really get on it in the next few weeks to put everything together to have a real shot at getting an interview.  My plan is to

I hope to get this all together in the next couple weeks and apply in early May. 

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