This year's January summit was largely production-focused, and you were out of the office going through the studios. What was that process like?
TL;DRThe production summit was a chance to get leads together to solve problems, review last year's successes and needs, plan the next iteration, and get a recent joiner out to the other studios.
With the distribution of our disciplines, there's a benefit to getting everybody in the same place, which is why I think that term summit became big for many, many years, depending on what it was they were trying to do or where the game was at or what the state was at. On the production side, or on the planning side, or the project leadership side, it was important for us to get in a room and just solve some problems as quickly as possible. And there's benefits to working remotely and there's benefits to working together. We had started doing these summits for production specifically last year, and so this was kind of our third one, or our next round of it, and it was a great time to evaluate last year: what we were successful at, what the team was really doing well, what the team needed more from, how we could support them better, how can we engage our community more, right? Just kind of, what is that next iteration to make this better? Not to change for change's sake, but with all the information we now have and the experience we now have in this environment, what's the next step and where do we want to take it. And so that was a big focus of the summit for sure. And then for me, Dennis had just joined the project six months ago, so getting them out in the rest of the studios and working alongside everybody, I think that was, for me, a small perk to doing it again. But the benefits are great to set the stage for the year or for the next six months, or just to go, okay, we all come together. We've solved these 10 problems. Okay, out there and now start making change.