Welcome to GDC 2006! This year we're looking to continue our tradition of excellence in covering the premier game development conference of the year, and we're going to start by giving you a look at what's in store for the coming week. It's exciting to be back in San Jose, if only for a time, and the familiar turf will certainly make reporting all the more easier for us. We have nine GDNet staff members onsite this year, and possibly may be pulling reports from a few of our moderators in attendance as well. Here's the full run down of our coverage this year.

Drew "Gaiiden" Sikora

Drew's carved out his little reporting niche over the years. In addition to covering a number of tracks including the IGDA, programming and business - he'll be covering the Independant Games Festival, the Game Developers Choice Awards, the Expo, Suite Night and as many parties/lunches/dinners as he can worm his way into - like a whopping four on Tuesday night overlapping in the span of 6pm to midnight. He'll also be checking out Satoru Iwata and Will Wright's keynotes.

Dave "DaveRM" Michael

Dave will be taking on the Serious Games Summit as well as the business track. He'll also be covering the Ronald D. Moore keynote on Battlestar Galactica. Most important of all though is that Dave has the nicest camera, and he knows how to use it. So he'll be around taking lots of photos. Lots.

Kelly L. Murdock

Kelly will be solely covering the visual arts track. He will also be meeting with Autodesk and softImage during the Expo, so watch for those reports as well.

Richard "superpig" Fine

After a 9 hour direct flight from Europe, all Rich wants to do is sleep and drink. Well, he can't sleep much unfortunately but he will be able to drink alot. He'll be covering the Booth Crawl if you haven't figured that out by now. Rich'll also be covering some tutorials, including the creativity bootcamp and Microsoft Developer Day. Once the sessions commence he'll be covering the programming and production tracks, as well as some of the keynotes.

Graham "gwihlidal" Wihlidal

Graham will be checking out the embodied AI tutorial as well as Microsoft Developer Day. His main focus during the sessions will be programming, but he wants to dabble in the design track as well. He'll be attending Phil Harrison's PS3 keynote as well.

Dave "michalson" Michalson

Michalson's going to be our keynote freak, attending all but the Sony one. He's also going to be focusing on the new direction of gaming, such as casual games, serious games and mobile games. He'll be providing some tutorials coverage as well. Finally, he'll be around the Expo a lot.

The Suits

Dave "Myopic Rhino" and Melissa "Frizzlefry" Astle along with Kevin "khawk" Hawkins will be busy at the GDNet booth, attending sessions needed by their professional positions, and working GDnet's business angle. However don't count them out for coverage!

And there you have it folks. Better set your browser to auto-refresh every 30 minutes because the reports will only start coming in faster and faster as the week goes on!