AUG Belgium Reboot (review)
Last week the Belgian Adobe UserGroup opened the New Year with their first meeting of 2010. Two sessions, French fries, beer, a birthday and ... a reboot !?!
The Fridge
Jan (Creative Director) showed us the thirty second commercials The Fridge, a Brussels based multifunctional post production company, made for Folkfestival Dranouter. He explained the lifecycle of their projects, showed the software/hardware they use and gave us some tips and tricks.
A great session on 3D modelling, After Effects, ...
Hanazuki
After the break we were taken into the chaotic world of Hanazuki, a multimedia creative studio and shop in Amsterdam. They showed us their latest installation (Fatty BumBum) and some prototypes/tests in witch they push the borders of Flash.
Amazing how both, an organised machine (The Fridge) and a chaotic world (Hanazuki) achieve such creativity!
AUG Reboot
After the second session it was time to find out what this reboot was all about. It was about launching 6 Special Interest Groups (SIG's) around Design, Video, Photography, Web, RIA and Print. Each SIG will organise two (or three) events a year that will focus on there domain.
Some thoughts...
First of all, I didn't like the fact that it was a Dutch only meeting. At least two people I know were planning on going but cancelled last minute because they wouldn't have understand anything...
Second, it's still a bit unclear for me what each SIG will do. I like it that the goal is to open up the usergroup to more people (the usergroup was very focused on Flash/Flex in the past) but I was waiting for the SIG leaders to step up and introduce there plans for the coming year(s).
Third, together with the reboot the website of the usergroup has been relaunched. It looks great, but again it's Dutch only. In your profile you can select which will be your SIG's (this time they speak about Enterprise, and not about RIA) and which Adobe programs you use, but the list of programs is limited to Bridge, Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator, Indesign, Photoshop and Reader. What about ColdFusion, Flex, Air, Premier, After Effects, Fireworks, Soundbooth, Flash Media Server, LiveCycle, ... ?
In an article on Belgian Cowboys (in Dutch) Kristof Drossaert has two more remarks. He loves the location (I do as well) but he thinks that it's not central enough and that some people have a long way to travel. And he remarks that the members are mainly student, juniors and freelancers, connected somehow to HoWest (a Belgian college with several bachelor degrees in Digital Design & Media, New media & communication technology and Digital Arts & Entertainment). He thinks that some more seniors might contribute to the growth of the usergroup. Two remarks that I share with him.
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Steven Verbruggen wrote on 02/01/10 1:53 PM
Hi Guust,well, if these are your concerns, I'm very happy to reassure you!
About the language. Point taken. Let me give you some insights on that one ..
1/ you have to understand this new structure is new, and we spend quite some time getting it were it is today. I know this is a lame excuse, but for us it's very valid. We preferred to get the basic right first, then upscale. So yes we want to open up, when the time is right.
2/ I know we all speak English in Belgium .. but do we? We think we do? Other than start a community where Dutch speaking people try to communicate in crappy English, we wanted to activate people in their own language. Add to that, that yes most flash/flex/.. people do speak English. But what about print designers? What about video folks. A lot of them do without doubt, but where the dev community is a pretty connected one, there are other Adobe product users that aren't that much connected, and yes the new usergroup is there for them as well
3/ To be really honest, our main concern is the website / communication. I'm well aware most of the audience is able to understand English sessions, but it's something else to give 1 (or a few) sessions in English than do every communication in multiple languages. We're not there yet. That said, as with the written communication, there are also people we don't present very well in English. We want to do things proper, and avoid amateurism so to speak
4/ Yes, we all know who these 2 people were, they made a big fuzz about it. Reality is, it really is a small percentage. We don't want to exclude them, but at this point it seemed like a no brainer, because it would've sacrificed the general quality of the user group. That said, we're still looking for help from for example the French community. It's easy to criticize, and we can live with that, but real help might get us somewhere ..
SIG's .. this will become more clear soon, on the website, but especially on the SIG events. The people, are willing to step up, trust me, at the right time and place.
Site .. work in progress. More programs are being added soon, together with other features/adaptations. Check regularly or keep an eye on our twitter account (@augbe).
Location: I hate it! Working in Genk / living in Leuven ;) But the place is nice, must admit that. Again, this is going to be opened up, and more central locations will be added. If you have affordable locations, let us know. This location was the most feasible for this time, thinking about scale, time to organize, and budget.
Students / Young people .. yeah they're there, and welcome. As is more maturity, so bring your friends. You know this is the chicken or the egg, right :)
Anyway, hope this replies helps. We're back, but still shaping up.
Hope to see you next time!
Cheers,
Steven
Marketing/Strategy AUG