I just celebrated my 4th year at Allegorithmic, and the great thing is that each year has been very different. I first started at our LA office when the game industry started to shift massively toward Substance, and I worked on anything related to sales, marketing, and communication. About 2 years later I went back to Paris for a while and then opened the office in Montreal last summer. Today I lead the entertainment side of things (game, VFX/animation and broadcast) focusing on sales and strategy.

How and when did you move to Montreal?

This happened quite naturally - comparing a map of our users and a map of our offices, it seemed obvious that Allegorithmic was underrepresented on the east coast. Montreal was the main candidate; being a hub for both game development (where some of our biggest clients are located such as Ubisoft, Eidos or WB Games) and VFX/Animation (where companies like Framestore, Technicolor & Digital Dimension were already adopting the tools - and our friends at Double Negative opened shop here at the same time!). So, we’d been toying with the idea for a while, and what I think pulled the trigger was our push into the VFX/Animation world last year, as well as, quite simply, the fact that I was personally pretty excited to move there! And so that move happened last June.

Where are you in Montreal?

I started in the very hip Mile End (where I enjoyed a few too many St Viateur Bagels) and now just moved closer to the office, just north of Concordia sitting on the side of the beautiful Mont Royal.

The Montreal office is in the Old Port district close to companies like Autodesk or Rodeo FX. We actually share an office with our friends from Ballistiq (the wizards behind Artstation!) who were kind enough to give us a spot. I think it was their way of thanking us for the beautiful shader balls (& cylinders) with which our vibrant community fills their homepage.