Wondering if anyone is going this year. It is in LA - I suspect the key people in the development of Blender will be there since I see there is a Blender booth in the exhibit hall.
I’m driving up from San Diego for the day to check it out. Haven’t gone for a while since it sometimes takes place in other cities (once it was in San Diego - of course I went).
Maybe I’ll meet one or two of you there?
I wish. The neural network stuff this year looks dope as heck.
I’ll be there working the booth, hopefully giving vfx demos on the wall monitor. 
I definitely want to make a stop at the Blender booth.
I’ll need to check it out.
These two are the ones I’m really impressed with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul0Gilv5wvY&t=181s
BendSketch in particular seems like it could be a whole new paradigm for 3D modeling hobbyists.
I’ll be there Sunday to show a bit of Blender work. Hope to meet you!
Will be going Aug. 1 - only got the exhibit passes this year.
BendSketch looks very cool.
I’m pretty sure the Sunday events are free and open to the public - at least that’s what this page said before they updated it: https://www.blender.org/events/
Can anyone confirm? I plan to go Sunday and also only have an exhibits only pass. Thanks!
Yes some of the Blender events on Sunday are free
"Blender Spotlight
Sunday, 30 July, 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm, Los Angeles Convention Center - Room 511BC
This is a free event, no badge necessary!"
Right, thanks HP! I just realized that they had actually changed to specify which events are free and which require a pass.
The 2:00pm-3:30pm Foundation and Community meeting is also free to the public! Although they don’t list the room number. Is it the same room as the 3:30pm event? I presume so, since they list the general “birds of a feather” from 2pm-5pm.
I used this page to determine when to go with an Exhibit only pass
http://s2017.siggraph.org/exhibition
Aug 1-3
It sounds as if there are free events on Sunday, but the Exhibit hall is not?
Yes, the free Blender events on Sunday didn’t seem to be listed on the siggraph.org page itself, at least not when I registered a few weeks ago.
Edit: reposting this from the LA Blender thread in the News forum since it seems to have all the answers:
Happy Summer of Blender Los Angeles BlenderHeads!
Many of you are likely avoiding the hot weather by Blending under pleasant air conditioning. Or perhaps you’re at the beach capturing DSLR textures or HDRIs. Wherever you do your CG / VFX / GameDev, you have to admit, things are heating up in the world of Blender with a 2.79 release and exciting 2.8 developments. The good news is that SIGGRAPH 2017 is right around the corner and so is your chance to meet loads of Blenderheads from around the world, including the Blender Foundation / Institute crew. For our July meeting, we are simply heading to the following FREE sessions (no SIGGRAPH pass required) to learn about the Blender roadmap from the source and to see the excellent work of your fellow Blender artists:
Blender Foundation - Community Meeting
Sunday, 30 July, 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm, Los Angeles Convention Center - Room 511BC
Chairman Ton Roosendaal presents work done on the free open-source Blender project in the past year and plans for the year ahead. Everyone is to provide feedback.
Blender Spotlight
Sunday, 30 July, 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm, Los Angeles Convention Center - Room 511BC
In this open-stage event, Blender artists and developers give short presentations to share their work with the audience. Have something to share, submit it here: https://www.blender.org/events/
After the sessions, the group usually finds a local bar for drinks / food to continue into the evening. Make a tentative plan for socializing post event around ~5pm-8pm, to be determined at the event.
More details can be found on our LA.Blend Meetup page here: https://www.meetup.com/Los-Angeles-B…-Meetup-Group/
good luck to everyone showing stuff!, and be the best most welcoming people you can be!, and never ever talk bad about other software.
Thought I’d give a short report of my visit to Siggraph.
A lot of booths showing their VR stuff, and big booths taking up a lot of space. Some booths were small, but point is, a lot of VR stuff.
Also a lot of 3D printing. Some very interesting machines and interesting stuff to pick up and hold that was created by the printers. Lulzbot had the coolest display with a 3x3 grid of printers all going at once.
NVidia and Maxon had big display of their products, as well as Autodesk, Intel and Dell. Those were probably the biggest I remember.
Foundry, too. There was a section in the middle that was specific to French companies related to the 3D/visual world.
Of course Blender was there (and this is really embarrassing…) I asked if I could see a quick demo of eevee - the guy (sorry, didn’t get his name) who was at the keyboard was not familiar with the PC and didn’t know where 2.8 was located, so he went to get someone to help. He got distracted by someone else taking pics. Then he got Ton Roosendaal to show me eevee. Very cool. So I asked if he knows what video card is in the machine - he then asked me what I have in mine… ummmm… uhhhh… totally couldn’t remember - very embarrassing… but, once I got the GPU installed (last year) I didn’t really think too much about it anymore. Anyway, it was cool that he took the time to demonstrate.
Interesting that Facebook had a booth (showing VR stuff I think). Another big booth was Academy of Art University. They probably had the biggest booth, with the least amount of visitors, it was a very well presented booth and had good info if you were trying to select a school.
Did anyone record the meeting and spotlight talks? Were you allowed to?
Which meeting?
the Birds of a Feather Blender community meeting and community spotlight
ttps://www.blender.org/events/
http://s2017.siggraph.org/birds-feather
I had the Exhibition only pass so we just walked the floor and talked to people in the booths so I have no idea about that.