Wow.
It's Saturday morning, and I am back in Montreal. I finally had a chance to go through all the videos that are fab Avid Video team put together, and it was really great to see what they were able to capture.
The week of SIGGRAPH goes by in a blur.. i was there for 8 days this year, since Christine and I get in a few days early for set-up. As shown in the videos, we had a lot going on this year.. Production Challenge, the Education Summit, Reseller Meeting, Leadership Summit, Developer Conference and all that took place before the show even started!
We had a large amount of the latest available 8 core workstations at the show - due to ICE being multi-threaded, we were pretty demanding of our hardware partners that they had to provided fully loaded systems, and they all delivered! We had at least 20 systems from our great partners like HP, Dell and Lenovo for SIGGRAPH that included the latest and greatest technology, including a couple of the new Dreamcolour monitors.
We had a new booth this year, which was constantly standing room only. I do apologize for the small design flaw that caused some tripping around the corners - if it's any consolation, I was the first one to go flying when i walked into the booth first thing Tuesday morning. (Thanks Mark for pointing that out during your demo!)
Of course, party party.. we hosted the NICE ICE party on tuesday to replace our annual User Group. The goal this year was to celebrate the launch of ICE with our clients, and i think we certainly were able to do that! And i am still impressed with Vanilla's set and how NICE ICE he really is!
We also sponsored the Blur Crystal Method party on Wednesday. I headed over after stopping by the Pipeline FX party at the Standard. At Blur i missed Carmen Electra's performance unfortunately, but i did get the chance to dance for a bit, sore feet notwithstanding!
More pix coming soon.. thanks to everyone on the Softimage team and in the Softimage Community for a stellar week.. it was my 5th SIGGRAPH and my favorite one to date!
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
ICE ICE Baby! Softimage Nice ICE party photos
Tuesday August 12th 2008, Softimage held its Nice ICE party at Club 740 in downtown Los Angeles. 3000 people packed into the club where Vanilla ICE performed!
Word to your mother
What an awesome party - Vanilla Ice was great, everyone thought he was brilliant. He even brought Ron Jeremy along with him... yeah, _the_ Ron Jeremy. My sides were hurting it was so funny.
I think pretty much everyone got into the party (except for people without ID - which is the club's policy, not ours) and had a good time. We had podium dancers, awesome DJ's, trapeze performers, all kinds of stuff going on. Hanging out with customers and friends with no agenda other than to have a good time. Driving to the club we saw our show reel being projected onto the sides of the building, which was pretty exciting. I spent a fair amount of time in the super VIP area (sneaking people in mostly), which seemed a privilege until I saw the bar bill. Ouch!
Anyway - another day on the show floor beckons. I pretty much lost my voice shouting at the party, so today is going to be interesting.
Best. Party. Ever. Jen and Christine deserve a huge round of applause for all their work on getting that party together.
(duplicate post)
I think pretty much everyone got into the party (except for people without ID - which is the club's policy, not ours) and had a good time. We had podium dancers, awesome DJ's, trapeze performers, all kinds of stuff going on. Hanging out with customers and friends with no agenda other than to have a good time. Driving to the club we saw our show reel being projected onto the sides of the building, which was pretty exciting. I spent a fair amount of time in the super VIP area (sneaking people in mostly), which seemed a privilege until I saw the bar bill. Ouch!
Anyway - another day on the show floor beckons. I pretty much lost my voice shouting at the party, so today is going to be interesting.
Best. Party. Ever. Jen and Christine deserve a huge round of applause for all their work on getting that party together.
(duplicate post)
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
And so it begins....
Managed to escape the frenzy last night and get an early night - so no red eye this morning. Had a flick through some of the announcements for the show. Mudbox looks really nice, so I am looking forward to seeing a demonstration of that. Apparently they were doing live digital painting throughout the party, which sounds pretty sweet. It will be interesting to see what Pixelogic come back with - I heard they were just doing sneak peak stuff. We'll soon see. It's always good for the customers when packages duke it out - you lucky people you ;)
I get to spend a whole morning on the stand today before I get locked away in our meeting suites, so talking to the visitors makes for a fun time. I don't envy the guys on our booth team, when I used to be an application engineer it got really tiring. It also screwed my demo flow for about a month after a show as I got stuck in a "show them as much as possible in ten minutes" demo mode :)
I'll take some pictures on my phone today and post them up later - tonight is our party, which is going to be great. I doubt my posts tomorrow will be quite so jolly :)
*short version of another blog post*
I get to spend a whole morning on the stand today before I get locked away in our meeting suites, so talking to the visitors makes for a fun time. I don't envy the guys on our booth team, when I used to be an application engineer it got really tiring. It also screwed my demo flow for about a month after a show as I got stuck in a "show them as much as possible in ten minutes" demo mode :)
I'll take some pictures on my phone today and post them up later - tonight is our party, which is going to be great. I doubt my posts tomorrow will be quite so jolly :)
*short version of another blog post*
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
All Education, all the time!
It's my last day in the office before heading to LA. ACK.
(A perfect time to write a blog post, of course.. not like i don't have a zillion things to do, but I like this better!)
I am just finalizing some details on our Education initiatives at SIGGRAPH, and I received some fantastic news from Kevin, our PR manager. I'll share that later on..
At SIGGRAPH 2008, Softimage will be holding an Education Summit on Monday, August 11th from 3-5pm at the Sheraton Downtown Los Angeles. We are expecting representatives from the leading art and design schools from around the world, and we have a packed agenda for them. We'll be showing off XSI 7 and integration with CryEngine 2 and Gamebryo.. presenting new training material from Escape Studios designed specifically for educators and "How to integrate XSI 7 & ICE into your curriculum," presented by Softimage Certified Instructor Adam Sale. And longtime Softimage user and studio owner Marc Bourbonnais of ModusFX will be sharing his thoughts on how instructors can help in "Preparing Students for their First Job."
More details can be found here: http://www.softimage.com/events/sig08/edu_summit.aspx
We are also holding the 2nd annual Production Challenge on Sunday, August 10, also at the Sheraton, from 11am-8pm. This is a master class to end master classes.. 4 of the industry's top XSI artists will be creating a shot LIVE in front of an audience. You won't be taught about techniques at this event.. you will learn both how and why these talented artists use the software in a real, live production scenario. It's also FREE!
Don't miss it - register HERE: http://www.softimage.com/events/sig08/prod_challng.aspx
For the 2nd year in a row, Softimage is sponsoring the Student Volunteer Program with 300+ licenses of SOFTIMAGE XSI 7 Academic. At the end of the show, each volunteer will have a FREE license of XSI 7. That's approximately $90,000 worth of software!
Ooh.. I just got GREAT news from our partners over at Digital-Tutors. Every attendee of our events at SIGGRAPH will receive a special promotion code for a brand new, not-yet-announced training title for XSI 7.. which will entitle them to 40 per cent off the cost of the training!
http://www.digitaltutors.com/store/home.php?cat=32
So my great news.. A few months ago, Digital Content Producer Magazine asked us to help promote a student cover contest for their SIGGRAPH issue. Well, they chose a Softimage XSI artist from Centre NAD here in Montreal!
Here's a mini shot of the cover:
(A perfect time to write a blog post, of course.. not like i don't have a zillion things to do, but I like this better!)
I am just finalizing some details on our Education initiatives at SIGGRAPH, and I received some fantastic news from Kevin, our PR manager. I'll share that later on..
At SIGGRAPH 2008, Softimage will be holding an Education Summit on Monday, August 11th from 3-5pm at the Sheraton Downtown Los Angeles. We are expecting representatives from the leading art and design schools from around the world, and we have a packed agenda for them. We'll be showing off XSI 7 and integration with CryEngine 2 and Gamebryo.. presenting new training material from Escape Studios designed specifically for educators and "How to integrate XSI 7 & ICE into your curriculum," presented by Softimage Certified Instructor Adam Sale. And longtime Softimage user and studio owner Marc Bourbonnais of ModusFX will be sharing his thoughts on how instructors can help in "Preparing Students for their First Job."
More details can be found here: http://www.softimage.com/events/sig08/edu_summit.aspx
We are also holding the 2nd annual Production Challenge on Sunday, August 10, also at the Sheraton, from 11am-8pm. This is a master class to end master classes.. 4 of the industry's top XSI artists will be creating a shot LIVE in front of an audience. You won't be taught about techniques at this event.. you will learn both how and why these talented artists use the software in a real, live production scenario. It's also FREE!
Don't miss it - register HERE: http://www.softimage.com/events/sig08/prod_challng.aspx
For the 2nd year in a row, Softimage is sponsoring the Student Volunteer Program with 300+ licenses of SOFTIMAGE XSI 7 Academic. At the end of the show, each volunteer will have a FREE license of XSI 7. That's approximately $90,000 worth of software!
Ooh.. I just got GREAT news from our partners over at Digital-Tutors. Every attendee of our events at SIGGRAPH will receive a special promotion code for a brand new, not-yet-announced training title for XSI 7.. which will entitle them to 40 per cent off the cost of the training!
http://www.digitaltutors.com/store/home.php?cat=32
So my great news.. A few months ago, Digital Content Producer Magazine asked us to help promote a student cover contest for their SIGGRAPH issue. Well, they chose a Softimage XSI artist from Centre NAD here in Montreal!
Here's a mini shot of the cover:
See you soon!
jen
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