Archives

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Past Meetings

2006 Jan Feb Mar Apr
2005 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2004 Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2003 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2002 Sep Oct Nov Dec

Past Screenings and Special Events

2006 Jan Feb Mar Apr May
2005 Nov
2004 Apr Aug Dec
2003 Sep

December 2003 Meeting

Our December meeting (End of Year Massive release 2.0) was at:

7 PM Tue 9th Dec
Velvet Lounge (in The Flying Scotsman)
639 Beaufort St
Mt Lawley

Over a hundred people joined us for the annual end-of-year event where Perth's leading new media and electronic content organisations combine for a damn good night of socialising. Hip young web designers mingled cheek by jowl with crusty old UNIX hackers. 3D gurus pale from the sunless existence that acquaints them with arcane keyboard shortcuts to jump to dialogs 18 menus deep drank until the event closed and then probably went home to optimise their models and rigging some more.

Here are some really grainy photos snapped with Greg's mobile phone. I've included lighter original versions and darkened versions more reminiscent of the atmosphere on the night (on my monitor, anyway). Click on the thumbnails to see larger versions (which really bring out the dead pixels in Greg's camera).

Attendees came from a variety of groups:

SIGGRAPH Perth
Perth DLF
Port-80 group
SyLAN
Macromedia User Group
WAIA (WA Internet Association)

The mood was laid back and social, no doubt due to the presence of a bar. Thanks to the SyLan folks for the impressive ceiling-projected visuals. There are some very talented demo programmers out there.

About an hour into the event Jonathan Knispel (interim chair of SIGGRAPH Perth) made a very brief thankyou speech and outlined some coming SIGGRAPH Perth events, such as:

• The ACA Multimedia Festival Screening in Jan/Feb 2004.
• The next interaction session in late Feb 2004. Bring your work and show it to your peers in a friendly informal setting.
• The next regular meeting in January. Speakers still being organised, but maybe an introduction to Houdini.

Brendan from SYLAN, Perth's new gaming and demo event, gave a few details about the event. One of the important things he mentioned is that it has been delayed for about a month, from mid-December 2003 to early January 2004. He also gave a brief description of what attendees should expect. For example there's a music competition, which hasn't appeared on the website yet (come on Will!).

The talking was soon over, allowing the happy crowd to return to some festive drinking. At the end of the evening, some very persistent socialites were awarded the striking SIGGRAPH 2004 posters that had adorned the walls for the event. We hope that inspires you to make the trip to LA mid-2004! But if you missed out on the posters, don't despair! We have more to give away at future meetings, along with Pixar walking teapots, SIGGRAPH chapters T-shirts, badges and other SIGGRAPH 2003 "acquisitions".

Credits

Many thanks to our supporters for helping out by contributing to the cost of the platters circulating during the evening. A big thankyou to IVEC (Interactive Virtual Environments Centre) for providing SIGGRAPH Perth's share. An especially large amount of gratitude also to WAIA for covering an especially large portion of the food costs.

Thanks also to the Department of Computing at Curtin University of Technology for hosting our web site and quickly replacing the faulty CPU fan that's been causing web server outages lately.