Summary

Drew Sikora has been active in the games industry since 2001, when he co-founded the NJ North IGDA chapter with Darrell Porcher, which has since grown to become one of the leading IGDA chapters in the world. He’s been involved with GameDev.net since 2000, becoming Executive Producer in 2006 and working hard with his team of awesome people to make GameDev.net a valuable resource for game developers of all trades. He’s also worked with Game Institute since its conception in 2001, supporting the growing community, managing live seminars on game development topics by experienced industry members and judging the institute’s regular game programming challenges. His past writing credits include three chapters in Game Design Perspectives (published by Charles River Media), contributing to and editing the GameDev.net Collection series, and well over 100 articles and interviews published on GameDev.net covering industry events and game development topics. Since 2008 he’s been mentoring students attending the GDC as part of the IGDA’s scholarship program. In whatever spare time he has he likes to program small game projects whenever he gets the urge.

When he’s not doing anything industry-related, he can be found practicing martial arts, bouncing high on trampoline or tumbling, doing stuntwork, playing his Playstation3, driving really fast in his car or on his motorcycle, hanging with friends or musing about something on his blog www.blade-edge.com

Experience

Executive Producer
GameDev.net
October 2006 - Present

Head of content management for the website as well as chief editor; responsible for article submissions, article/review postings and scheduling, book posting and reviews, poll management. Directly overseeing the product review and news teams. Also in charge of overseeing community management.

Founder, Programmer
Blade Edge Software
December 2002 - Present

Maintaining company vision, business management, project management and code architecture

Coach
Shrewsbury Gymnastics
August 2001 - Present

Teaching regular classes, boys and girls from ages 4-16; coaching girls team when needed; coaching trampoline team whenever we happen to have one

Staff Writer, Newsletter Editor
GameDev.net
June 2001 - Present

Writing up articles on game development and the game development industry including topics such as programming, design and production; covering industry events like industry conferences, topic-centric conferences and local IGDA gatherings. Further tasked with editing, compiling and maintaining the weekly newsletter GDNet Direct.

Community Relations
Game Institute
June 2001 - Present

Handling customer support and information requests, as well as student issues both within the GI community and in other communities on the Web where discussions of GI may originate. Also judging of GI student challenges and moderating the forums.

Live Events Manager
Game Institute
January 2006 - December 2007

Responsible for managing live seminar events including scheduling, maintaining and directing seminars. Responsible for seeking out new speakers and managing existing speakers. In charge of all event content and distribution.

Programmer
Napali Networks
July 2000 - November 2000

Experimenting with multiplexing over TCP/IP using windows sockets. Terminated due to lack of funding/company shutting down

Websites