I’m curious if there are any User Groups running in the Los Angeles Area. I’d love to get together with some blenderheads and “talk shop”. Nobody I know personally uses blender and it would be good to know others are in the neighborhood.
I’m in Riverside county … haven’t heard of any BUGs too close to this area or yours. There is San Diego group that’s recently started to meet, but that drive is a bit much for me.
I suppose San Diego would be makeable to get out out of town occasionally, but I would love something a bit closer.
Wow, not a lot of Blender love in LA eh?
I’m sure there’s plenty … maybe we should just keep bumping this thread with hypothetical discussions of forming a group, until enough people notice it.
/smile at that!
Bump. I may be interested in attending this.
I’ve started a Google map for planning purposes … here it is.
Anyone who’s interested in the idea can mark their location. Once we see a reasonable amount of interest (~10 people, maybe more?), we can start to evaluate central locations that might make a good meeting place.
Good idea to do a map and figure out where people are first! But, I can’t figure out how to mark my place on your map. Any ideas?
Sorry … it should be editable now. At the map, click Edit, and the right-click menu will have ‘Add a placemark’.
Yes, good idea. I added mine
I’m interested in an LA user group, I might be able to drag along a friend I’ve converted to over to blender and a few others interested in learning.
and thanks to your thread bumping I noticed the topic
can’t wait for a few more reply’s so we can get this thing going!
LiquidApe: Do you think you sould change the title of the thread? Some people may assume it’s a question they don’t have an answer to, and pass it over. Maybe at least remove the question mark, or say something like ‘User Group in Los Angeles Area - Discussion’ or ‘Forming Los Angeles User Group’ …
It may be a little early, but we can also keep the thread alive by tossing around general ideas on possible locations, topics, etc.
Hi guys, I’ve added myself to the map.
It’s starting to look like a central LA location would be best based on people’s locations on the map so far. Unless you wanted to attract OC folks as well, then somewhere further south would be better. But perhaps OCers will form their own group later.
Regarding topics I’m not sure. Would probably be a good idea to see what other blender user groups are doing. I’ve never been to any kind of user group meeting before, but I imagine that one cool thing to do would be a show and tell, so that any of the people attending can show what they’ve been working on, past work, demo reel, etc. Other than that, general discussions about blender, like latest developments, learning, etc.
Cool, we’re up to six … although I’m starting to feel like a foreigner, way out by Riverside!
Shenan: That looks like a pretty good list of initial topics, thanks!
That is a bit of a drive. Do we all have laptops? Or should we be looking for a location that has computers, like an internet cafe or a community college IT classroom?
Yeah, but not too bad … depending on traffic.
Anyone who has a laptop could bring it, and probably should, if the meet-up isn’t at a place with computers … but finding one might be a plus.
I think that it will be harder to find a place with computers. If we can find a place like that, fine, but I think it would work better with laptops anyway. People will be more comfortable on their own computers, and any place that already has computers will probably be very restrictive on what you can and install on their computers.
Those that have laptops could bring them, and those that don’t could bring their files on a thumb drive to the meeting, and use someone else’s laptop to show their stuff. A projector would be great too, but that may be asking too much. 