Unite 2013 Post Mortem

So the big event has gone by and since this was my first Unite I thought it would be interesting to reflect on it and compare to some other conferences in the past that I've attended, JavaONE seems a good comparison so that'll be my baseline .

First off, I had fun attending Unite 2013, my father lives out in Nanaimo so it worked really well for me except that he came to visit on PARTY night so take my comments with that in mind, I'm speaking about the conference itself and not the party/awards ceremony.

Initial impressions were quite good, coming out of the airport you saw the Unite 2013 sign and that was cool.
suggestion: some instructions here to remind on locations, recommendations on places to head to for chow, etc... might have been useful here.

Checking into the hotel (Days Inn) I bumped into someone in the elevator on the way back from pre-registering who happened to be attending, spoke briefly and that was that for the first night - grabbed some chow and headed to my room.

So the next day I'm up and ready to head off to the keynote, of course thinking i'll be buying a ton of swag while i'm at the conference i never bothered to bring my JavaONE hat/jacket. Anyhow I get there and figure the swag stores will probably be up and what do i see - nada. No jackets. No hats. Not even cheesy stuffies, pens or something!! We get a free shirt, that was cool and appreciated, but I'm after something I can wear to work (business casual sadly, no t-shirts for me 'cept friday perhaps). This actually ticked me off a bit, I should have brought my Java jacket and hat ... kinda says lots right there doesn't it?
suggestion: conference = TONS OF SWAG - PERIOD. It's not just to buy but also helps me identify other Unite folks in the area/on the streets between sessions and after the last session that day. It's an easy ice breaker to meet folks and allows me to REPRESENT!

The keynote was good and Garriott was great too, no problems there. I've seen Gosling speak a few times and the JavaONE keynotes aren't any better, so this was good. What was really neat for me was sitting next to AngryAnt - it was cool because this is a personality you know from the forums and putting a face to that was an experience, nice guy! It occurs to me his approach was precisely what I missed for many of the other Unity3D folks you see online. The thing is the only reason I really recognized him in a crowd was his shirt - it worked well for sure.
suggestion: wear a shirt or jacket or something that identifies you by your forum name, something that makes you jump out as one of the Unity3D folks - do what Emil did .

Of course, he asked me for a business card and being my ultra-prepared developer self - I forgot to bring some .
suggestion: why not make a 'pseudo collectible' kind of item for each participant, perhaps you have a sheet of "game tokens" printed off with the attendee's name, title and email - similar to the name cards we were given but something that forgetful folks like myself or people without business cards can use to swap info easily.

One thing I noticed in the sessions was how many folks brought tablets and laptops, a lot of people surprisingly had the schedule written down, i would say it was a 50/50 split between written down vs just using your tablet (i used a tablet myself).
idea: maybe as a handout when we register give us a little bound notebook, which has some unite conference details, schedule, etc... in it! You could even have pages for each session that integrate a small survey, the pages might be branded with the attendees email address so they can just mark off a few questions and drop the sheet into a box when leaving the session - might be a way to increase peoples participation in surveys?

It seems a minor thing, but those little artifacts really make a difference - I still have my old JavaONE retractable fob we used to get into sessions. How cool would it be to have a few Unite game tokens !

One thing that I found was that it was difficult for me to just hit someone up for a conversation, which is odd because i'm not necessarily a hardcore introvert. One thing that occurred to me was that between sessions and during the course of the day (especially the 3rd day), there seemed to be a fair bit of 'dead space'. I was fortunate enough to find a couple folks to speak with (hey Josh, Mike and Dave!), during the course of each day but I found it a bit awkward at times.
suggestion: why not use some of the empty rooms to organize sessions during the day, how about a 1hr game jam contest where you just grab a seat and join a group to try and complete a game programming challenge? maybe have a few unity3d staff join in on the fun and have a show down with some of the attendees as their helpful game design minions?

I found that the main point of conversation (not surprisingly) was showing my game to folks and listening to their projects and asset store items.
suggestion: what about between sessions, at lunch or after the days sessions - if you have some way of making it easier for people to show off their hard work. maybe a "speed dating" kind of setup where you switch tables and show people what your up to?

Anyhow, time to end this epic post here - overall I had a lot of fun and thanks to all the Unity3D folks for their efforts. The "sit down with a unity3d person for some help!" labs were great btw!

Hope to see you at Unite 2014.

 

Great insight!
Too bad i couldn't go. Maybe next year.

 

Thanks for nice read. Hope to be there next year!

 

That's how I found the Marmoset guys and got help on a future purchasing decision. Speaking of their shirts, their logo is awesome. I hope they make a run of shirts just like Unity is doing.

I think that's a great idea. I would definitely make use of this.

 

Some very interesting ideas there. One thing to note is that you keep talking about little things like a notebook etc. All well and good but don't forget that all these things need to be made/purchased/mailed to the location/setup etc. All costs money. And will raise the cost.
I do agree that based on location of Unite having an idea of hotels that people are using will help in getting people together afterwards. Having people spread out doesn't help with getting to know people.
Possible working out a deal with several hotels in the area.
Sorry the issue about business cards is your own fault. That is something you need to take care of as any professional person would tell you at any conference. Be prepared.
Thanks for the insight though.

 

+/- $25 on a ticket will not make a difference - for reference, the last JavaONE I attended gave us a free backpack, planner and keyfob for a comparable ticket price.

That comes across as a bit bellicose, I like to think of this as an opportunity - in fact, the more i think about it the better an idea it seems ... even make the game tokens assigned to each person have a digit, make it so that there are some rudimentary prizes if you can collect and show a sequence at certain presentations, might be a good way to dovetail vendor handouts with a social hook for the attendees. At any rate, it wasn't an issue as attendance for me was purely for fun - if you're looking to use the conference to network don't follow my example .

Anyhow good times, if I had to make one suggestion above all else it was the lack of swag for sale - this was echo'd by just about everyone i met, even a couple of the unity3d folks themselves. Give us jackets, hats, etc...