As we are approaching the beta, the activity surrounding our project is increasing. Our sustained efforts to attract potential partners are producing satisfying results and we are actively hiring talents in various fields to meet our needs as we are working on getting everything ready for an imminent release of our beta product. In this article, we’ll do a report on our presence at the Korea Blockchain Week, present to you some of our new team members and give you some information about what’s coming next.
KBW19
From September 27 to October 4, our team went to Seoul for the Korean Blockchain Week 2019. It was the first major crypto event we attended since our IEO and we had a very positive experience. Korea is a key country for video games and blockchain. Competitive gaming is deeply rooted in the mainstream culture of the country and their leading tech industry is seriously involved in technologies related to Blockchain.
We had the pleasure to meet various crypto communities, including EOSIO’s, and were delighted to note that Ultra is catching the interest of many Blockchain developers. Thanks to the recent announcement of our three first Technical Block Producers we are starting to be noticed across the globe and this is a source of motivation for us.
We didn’t focus only on crypto related meetups though: we also had a lot of meetings with gaming industry companies and the overall enthusiasm makes us confident about our goal to hit the Korean video game market in 2020. It’s unfortunately difficult for us to say more than that, but it looks promising, and we hope to go back to Seoul in the coming months.
Meetup KBW
During the Korean Blockchain Week, we organized with NEAR Protocol a meetup to discuss about the future of gaming and Blockchain. Some talented developers joined us for this event: Gabby Dizon from Outplay, Sandeep Nailwal from Matic, Sebastien Borget from The Sandbox, Jeffrey Zirlin from Axie Infinity, Matias Nisenson from Experimental and Damian Byeon from ITAM GAMES discussed with us about topics such as “How to Compete with Traditional Games Industry Actors”, “How to Bring Players to Blockchain” and “What Does the Future of Games Look Like”.
If you couldn’t attend, it is your lucky day! We recorded the event in HD and made the whole meetup available for you.
If you don’t have the time to watch the whole video, we also prepared a collection of Nicolas’s answers. Sharing his vision about gaming, Blockchain and Ultra.
Hirings
As mentioned in our previous Community Updates, our team is expected to grow up to 100 members in order to achieve its goals in time. This month of October has been a particularly proactive one toward hiring, with approximately 10 new team members since the last community update.
Here is two executives profile:
Caroline Fontaine — Head of Legal
With more than 10 years of legal practice in the software industry (fintech, videos games, augmented reality), negotiating agreements and dealing with IP issues, Caroline is joining Ultra as the Head of Legal to design and implement our legal department, and to provide key legal advice.
Paul Horrell — HR Director
Paul has spent over a decade in HR executive roles at Blizzard Entertainment, combining his passion for video games and his skills in organisational psychology. He notably created award winning digital learning programs to ensure deep product knowledge in a fast paced evolving gaming industry. Paul will build out the HR function at Ultra to support employees needs and manage our high scaling speed.
They Talk About Us
Our community is amazing! During the last month, we could feel the excitement about our upcoming announcements and events. Many of you guys showed warm support and made excellent contributions. We are proud to lead such a project and glad that you are more and more numerous to follow us closely. Our community is not the only source of warm cheering, media are also talking about us quite positively! In their article on permissioned blockchains, Hackernoon mentioned us as an example in the domain and explained why decentralization makes sense in the corporate world:
“As a company, being chosen as a block producer is a great opportunity to earn money, because this is a way to get rewards just for hosting a node. There’s no benefit in acting maliciously for them, because they have a lot at stake: their reputation. “
Cointelegraph also noticed our recent Block Producers Announcement and wrote about it:
“Blockchain-based PC games distribution platform Ultra.io has unveiled its first three block producers (BPs): Bitfinex, EOS Rio and EOS New York. All three future network maintainers are EOS BPs, while Bitfinex is also a major and well-known cryptocurrency exchange.”
Ask Me Anything
Our executives made two AMAs recently. The first one was an interview organized by MaxDapp on October 23. You’ll learn a lot about our technology and the state of our development.
The next AMA occured in the telegram group CryptoDiffer on October 25 and was a community one, meaning that anyone was able to ask questions to Nicolas Gilot (CEO) and Emmanuel Gimmenez (Lead CM). You can read the full transcript here: https://t.me/joinchat/Brbs51k5cWoRBKtsgmb6Ew
What’s next!?
Upcoming Events…
Our team will be attending to the Paris Games Week 2019! From Wednesday, October 30 to Sunday, November 3, Melissa Brown (Senior DDR), Edward Moalem (CSO), Nicolat Gilot (CEO) and David Hanson (CEO) will survey the exhibition, talk to publishers, developers and potential partners, and evangelize the various aspects of Ultra. They’ll also spend some time with existing partners, and future ones!
At the same time, Nicolas will participate in a panel called “Everything you wanted to know about blockchain games (but were afraid to ask)” with Nicolas Pouard from Ubisoft. This event called “GameConnection Europe” is mainly reserved for professionals of the video game industry (Game developers, service providers, publishers…) and will take place in Paris.
Right after the PGW2019, Melissa Brown will be speaking at the International Future Computing Summit. The event is taking place November 5–6 in California. She will notably talk about Ultra and the challenges developers are facing to stand out in the very competitive games market.
If you want to get the chance to meet Ultra’s executives during these events and get an exclusive sneak peek of the project, send us an email to contact@ultra.io.
Beside Events…
Expect a few things from us in the near future, especially about our blockchain and the testnet launch, as well as an exciting partnership announcement!
About Ultra
Ultra is the first entertainment platform providing all key games industry services under a single roof, accessible through a single login.
Built around our PC games distribution store, Ultra Games, our platform will provide access to countless centralized and decentralized services: Discover, buy, play and sell your games and in-game items, watch live-streaming feeds, interact with your favorite influencers, participate in contests, compete in tournaments, and much more.
Ultra has been built to provide endless value for players, a fair playing ground for developers, and a whole new world of opportunities for the games industry.
For more information, visit ultra.io and onultra.io and follow along on Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, and Discord.
