The Passion of David

by Jason Della Rocca (December 2004)

It was a great honor to welcome industry legend, David Perry, to Montreal. About 200 developers came out to listen to David talk about his start in the game industry (well, what there was of one back then). Oddly enough, David wasn't our first choice. Rather, he graciously stepped in to cover for his executive producer at Shiny, Stuart Roch, who had to cancel at the last minute to be a new dad...

David's presentation was slick and inspiring. Packed full of pictures and anecdotes of the early days, it was certainly impressive. What's more amazing is that his passion is still so evident after 20+ years in the biz. Sharing insider tips (ie, get more media coverage by replying!, or how to sell your company), David was open and willing to share his wealth of experience. When his lecture was over, people rushed the stage and didn't let him go for another ~2-hours!

Since this was our xmas/holiday meeting, we decided to do a charity raffle. Anyone who brought in a canned good was given a ticket in our raffle for cool stuff, including game dev books from Charles River Media, Focal Press and New Riders, as well as games from Ubisoft, DC Studios and A2M, and a copy of XSI Elements from Softimage. We collected several boxes full of food for the Sun Youth food bank. Thanks!

This month marked our first meeting held at the Society for Arts & Technology, which made for a much cooler setting than previous locales. The plan is to hang out at the SAT for the next while :-)

Big thanks to our supporters

Meeting Sponsors	Chapter Sponsors	Partners

And, of course, thanks to our volunteers who helped out: Isabelle Marazzani, Richard Naoum, Denis Sabourin, Jean-Marc Vincent and Guillaume Voghel.

December Gathering Pictorial

...here are just a few shots I took during the December gathering of the Montreal Chapter. (all persons are identified from left to right)

David Perry talks a bit about himself...

Lots of people listen.

Getting a bit hot under the collar, David takes questions from the audience.

And they all listen attentively.

After the lecture, David hung around and took another two hours (!) of questions and chatting...

...while Dominique Roussy (A2M), Greggoire Gobi (Ubisoft), Frederick Brassard (Ubisoft) and Alexandre Parizeau (A2M) drink at the bar.

Some of the canned goods we collected for the Sun Youth food bank.

Chris Crowell (Ubisoft) discusses his role as a world architect with David.

Alexandre and Frederick enjoying time with their hero, David :-)