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“Meeting our users is always the most exciting thing for us as it is how we get to find out about how they use Unity,” says Unity’s chief creative officer Nicholas Francis.
“It’s also a great time for us to find out what they want and for them to engage with us and help shape the future of Unity.”
He is talking about Unite 2010, the latest of Unity’s annual conferences for its Unity engine users, and those who are interested in the engine. This year the three-day event will be taking place at the Marché Bonsecours in Montréal, Canada. Francis seems excited about the potential of this year’s location.
“As Unity is a global phenomenon, Montréal has the advantage of being convenient for both our European and North American developers,” he says.
“And it was actually the location that was most voted for by our developers.”
This year’s conference, as well as featuring several hands-on tutorials with the Unity engine every day, will offer sessions on Unity for both console and mobile games development, serialisation and advanced editor scripting and how to make money with Unity.
There will be talks and panel sessions from Unity staff and users, and the event will end with the annual Unity Awards show, recognising some of the most exciting uses of Unity over the past year.
“Attendees will learn how to make more effective use of Unity to make better games and applications. We’ve got some deeply technical sessions being given by our staff as well as sessions from other developers,” Francis states.
“Our engineers will also be giving hands-on sessions for developers to come and talk about their projects and get advice on aspects of Unity that interest them. This year we’ve also introduced a speed-dating session for developers to meet publishers.”
As ever, there seem to be some surprises in store for Unity attendees this year as well.
“At Unite we always treat users to new announcements, and this year will be no exception,” says Francis.
Now in its fourth year, the Unite conference is going from strength to strength. The event has granted Unity a whole new level of international exposure as a company and, according to Francis, opened up interactions with its customers around the globe that have changed the firm for the better.
“Unity has such a broad user base today that having our own event allows us to really go in-depth on a variety of technical aspects,” he says.
“It also allows our users to meet and interact with each other – sharing knowledge and experience is a great thing and our community continues to be really important to us.”
