EXL UNITE Toronto with Kameleoon & Speero: An evening in review
Last week, barely two months after meeting experimenters from Microsoft, Best Buy, Canada Goose, and more at the Las Vegas UNITE Summit, we wrapped up EXL UNITE Toronto, a continuation of the EXL and UNITE series that bring experimentation professionals together in a casual setting for networking and professional development.
Kameleoon's UNITE events are globally-recognized, but this event, co-organized with Speero, was the only one in the series to take place in Canada in 2025, so we had high hopes for a lively night of inspired conversation at Spirit of York in Toronto's Distillery District.
We were not disappointed!
In a nutshell, if you're in product, marketing, UX, or data, and you like talking shop with people who get it, this was your kind of night.
There were no slide decks. No lengthy presentations or speeches, no product plugs or sneak peeks.
Just good food, great company, and an open bar. Everything needed for experimentations professionals to connect, trade experiences, and expand their local networks.
The evening begins!
It feels like a simple thing to point out, but the great thing about EXL UNITE in Toronto was that everyone was talking.
As soon as attendees arrived at 5:30pm, conversations sprung up. Experimentation experts, journeymen, and students began filing in, representing a community that, before now, has not had a chance to meet in person.
Attendees came from as far as Ottawa, Montreal, and, in one case, all the way from Vancouver, just to connect with their colleagues. For over three hours, conversation flowed between guests representing major brands, including:
- Loblaws
- Thompson Reuter
- TikTok
- Rocket
- Air Canada
- Texas Instruments
- Sobeys
- Experiment Nation
Toronto's insights into experimentation
To no one's surprise, the conversations were insightful.
Rafael Bica, the Manager of Data Optimization & Insights for Air Canada, talked about how important it is to prove the value of experimentation, not just for stakeholders, but for the experimenters themselves. He noted that they need to understand the potential of what they're doing, especially when they come from product or marketing teams who don't yet have a mature experimentation strategy.
Other common topics included the impact of AI and how different teams can work together to achieve experimentation-led growth. We got to share insights from our latest industry report, and learn what’s working well and not so well for Canadian experimenters: challenges with scaling, learning how to properly experiment after coming in from product or marketing, and aligning outcomes across different teams.
Wrapping up the evening
Even as the evening wound down, people continued to forge new connections. We had to start taking down our setup around the last attendees, because the conversations were so earnest!
“This was really nice,” Suchita Srinivasan, a CRO expert, later told us. “The community is so small we rarely get to meet each other. And it’s better than an event with 100+ people.”
The stripped-down, intimate nature of EXL UNITE was in many ways its secret weapon. We loved meeting a local community of experimenters, learning from them, and doing something a little different.
Thank you to everyone who joined us. And for those who didn’t, we hope to meet you next time!
