Inaugural IGDA Unity SIG Meeting

LOCATION

GDC 2014, San Francisco, California North Hall Moscone Center, ROOM 114 March 19th 2014, 5-6 pm

NOTES

Introduced our founders and Steering Comittee Members: Oded Sharon (Acting Chair), Mike Croswell (Acting Secretary) and Emil (AngryAnt) Johansen (Acting Co-Chair).

Other co-founders introduced themselves later: Phil Ludington (DC Unity SIG) and Dan Fischbach (affiliated with Philadelphia Unity Group).

We covered the Mission Statement and since it is a work in progress we gathered the attendees’ ideas of what they think the emphasis of our group should be.

Key Goals (Including New Ideas)

1. Connecting Groups and Individuals – Includes Local to Local, All Unity Users & Unity Technlogy Employees (You!) to each other, Noobs to Pros, Educators to Learners and those in-between, Users to Unity Technologies and Vice-Versa.
2. Assessing Skills – I think the idea here was perhaps to use this for helping us know our weaknesses and strengths as well as for self-promotion?
3. Best Practices – This area could have many sub-areas, like Programming, Asset Preparation and Organization, etc.
4. Tips & Tricks – As above. Lots of areas here! Things that are not necessarily published at Unity (yet!) or at least not found in one central location as we will have.
5. Webinars – This is where all the Local Unity SIGS can share with individuals and groups. Individuals could share their particular expertise, or learning experiences with others, etc. All levels!
6. Education (at multiple levels) – As above. Miinimally, might hold links to existing educational areas¹.
7. Unity Developer Voice – Used to filter and communicate the desires/wants/needs of developers to Unity Technologies. Examples include Input and Accessibility. Advocacy – but friendly!

Representation

Many folks introduced themselves and I would like to eventually post all the attendees here in order of introduction² . For now, here is a list of the organizations and types of individuals that showed up: Rochester Institute of Technology, Women In Game SIG leader, undergraduate and graduate students, a few professors, Cogswell College, GGJ Club, University of Tennessee, Digipen, USC, Dreamworks, and many more.

Some IGDA Unity SIG’s and Chapters Represented

• Vienna IGDA (Unity3D Group Soon!), Austria – Sebastian Holzfeind
• Tel Aviv IGDA and Unity Users Group, Israel – Oded Sharon
• DC Area Unity Users Group, USA – Phillip Ludington, Founder
• Houston Unity Group – Justen T. Hootman, Member
• Copenhagen, Denmark – Emil Johansen, Co-Founder of Unity SIG’s
• Philadelphia, PA, USA – Dan Fischbach, Member
• Fort Collins Unity SIG, CO, USA – Mike Croswell
• Taiwan SIG – ?
• Seattle SIG – Brandon Wu

New Members / Areas of Interest

¹ Unity Technologies already does a good job, so once again we don’t want to “reinvent the wheel”. Still, there is lots of room for presenting information from a different point of view, or expanding on those areas where the Unity website is weak.

² Didn’t think to start on that until we were half way around the room. :-)

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