Hey everyone there are 309 Meetup groups for Blenderheads around the world. Mine is in Phoenix, Arizona and only has 9 members; and yet we are the 21st largest. The Los Angeles group (the largest) meets in 2 days and has 70 members, but their turnout doesn’t look promising. Heck our Phoenix group has never even gotten together (but we’re working on it).
When I go to Siggraph, the Blender booth is ALWAYS overflowing with enthusiastic Blenderheads and each year Jonathan Williamson or someone else in the community has taught me something amazing about Blender. This year it was Contours and Rigging, last year it was Dynamic Topology. I think most everyone when they leave a conference they feel invigorated by all the contact and new things they learn.
Maybe we can help Blender be a more effective community in our local environments by learning who each other is and seeing where points of collaboration are.
I do not work for any organization, I’m simply a passionate enthusiast for Blender. So maybe you want to check out if your city or one nearby has a Blender Meetup group, here’s the list of groups: http://www.meetup.com/Blender
The LA group typically averages about 20 Blenderheads per face to face meeting meeting, sometimes smaller, sometimes larger. Our meeting next Sat will be virtually hosted by Theory Animation (http://theoryanimation.com/), who are also Blenderheads. There are actually a few regional Blender groups in Southern California as there are many of us and we’re so spread out. The MeetUps are always fun and informative, highly recommended.
I’ll be honest, its one thing to get my butt off and head to Siggraph, but another for user meetings. LA traffic is bad and the meets ups I am used to going to have either people like Nevil Page giving us a rundown on zbrush or a couple devs from Bethesda giving a rundown on how they made parts of Skyrim. Compared to a blender meetup thats pretty much a tough sell. I think perhaps what is missing is how the meetings sell themselves and perhaps even getting someone known on board to do a rundown or what not. Just meeting up with fellow users generally isnt enough, especially when tied to a 40 min drive just to get from one part of LA to the other (god i hate the traffic here).
This meetup-site is interesting. Our meetup in Nuremberg usually has 10 to 20 blenderheads attending yet I am the only one registered on that meetup page for our group
I live in Maryland and I’d love to go to a monthly meeting, but my problem is I work long hours during the week and the weekend is either more work, or catching up on things at home that I couldn’t do during the week. If you do get something together, let me know and I’ll try to get there.
I’ve debated starting up a local Blender group, but I can’t justify paying Meetup $12 a month just to find out that there aren’t any users in my area. Anyone here around the Cincinnati, Ohio or Northern Kentucky region?
