3DBC Wednesday Activities
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It was a long day today, but tomorrow will be even longer.
Today started with a long session for new users that filled the morning. I didn't attend - I was working on the final touches of my Ruby presentation (although, just as I started presenting, someone pointed out that I titled my presentation "The Best of Rudy", instead of the "The Best of Ruby". I felt like an idiot. Duh.)
The food at Google is free. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Huge selection and good quality.
My presentation went OK. It was pretty full and I did get lots of questions - some of which I could answer and some which other audience members were able to answer. (Phew!!) I would have liked to have had more time to to cover all the wonderful scripts that people have written and to acknowledge all the scripters who have contributed their time and efforts to make Sketchup a better product.
The first script I demoed was numb.rb - written by Tavi - it was the first user-community script to be written. When Google gets the video published, you all will get a laugh out of it.
I didn't have enough time to do justice to all the really fancy new scripts that have come out. For what they did see though, people were going "google" (pun intended) over scripts like Tools On Surface and Windowizer. Since folks like Rick Wilson (Windowizer) and Tyler Miller (Sandbox Tools) where there, I wrangled them into presenting their scripts. Both did an awesome job. Thanks guys. Rick demoed of feature of Windowizer that I had never seen before - proportional windows!!!! Ask him about it - or, wait for the YouTube video! Joe Esch, the original author of SketchUp was there and came up to me afterwards and told me he had been writing some ruby scripts to help with his kitchen remodel project. Brad Schell, the co-founder of @Last, was there too. Both he and Joe commented afterwards that they too were blown away with the current set of scripts. All you ruby scripters are awesome!!
Jean "Johnny" ("just ideas") Lemiere even made a cameo appearance, graciously reading Didier's bio information for me. Everyone clapped!! It was fun.
People were very impressed with Adam Billyard's LightUp video and the "Orange" SketchyPhysics video. Both got lots of applause.
People were really blown away with Tools On Surface - and Joe Esch even commented to me afterwards that having a sets of tools to work on curved surfaces was a big hole that just never got addressed. Way to go Fredo!
While I did mention them, I didn't get to demo SubD & Smooth or FFD - there just wasn't enough time for the setup and demoing within the time allotted.
The next two sessions I went to were "SketchUp and Google Earth" and "Sketchup and AutoCAD".
Alex from Google did a good job walking everyone through the steps of Geo-positioning model space in GE, bringing the terrain into SketchUp, using Photo Match to draw a house, and then exporting that back into GE. Even despite the BUG SPLAT she got, she did a good job presenting. It's a tough presentation to do with lots of onlookers and lots of questions.
Daniel Tal and Mitchel Stangle co-presented the AutoCAD session, with Daniel talking about the CAD cleanup scripts and going from Import through fully massed models, and Mitchel talked about workflow between AutoCAD and SketchUp. Lots of AutoCAD terms I don't know, but there was good audience interaction.
The keynote this evening was Cameron Sinclair telling us about AFH - Architects for Humanity. They've done an impressive list of projects all over the world and will no doubt get a few new volunteer designers and architects for their efforts.
Dinner was what Google called "BarBQue", but I'm afraid hot dogs, italian sausage, hamburgers, grilled chicken breasts and pork loin, BBQ, does not make. Aside from the technically incorrect description, dinner was good!
Oh, that reminds me of my presentation funny. When Jonathan Dormody of Google invited me to present "The Best of Ruby" back in April, I asked what exactly did that mean. He explained that he wanted me to present about the ruby scripts that gave the most productivity. My first thought after his explanation was "Where's the meat?", meaning there was no "meat" in the presentation!! I mean, I'm a programmer, but they didn't want me to talk about programming. Go figure. Anyway, I figured, I would rename the presentation to "Vegetarian Ruby", since there was no (programming) meat in it. I even left that "side title" in the presentation. Just to be sure that everyone left with some "meat", I brought 2 pounds of Texas Beef Jerky cut into bite sized chunks for all the attendees to take a piece of as they left the presentation. People thought I was kidding!! It was a hit!
I ran out of time to cover everything I was wanted to cover. The first and biggest chunk to get cut was the demo of my CAD cleanup scripts. There were several people that wanted to see them work, so I am going to demo them, in-depth, in the Lab tomorrow morning. I got to thinking about it, and I have never, ever demoed these scripts live to anyone before. I've explained their use on Smustard, and I've made several posts about their use over the years, but this will be the first time I'll use them with onlookers over my shoulder. Should be fun!!
John Wehby (pronounced WEE-by), a Ruby scripter, is here and I got to meet him. I met several people that I've "met" either through Google Groups, SCF, private emails and Smustard activities or even phone calls. Everyone is so friendly.
I've rambled enough. It's late and tomorrow is a big day.
Wish you all were here!
Todd
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Cheers for the update todd, its good fun reading your little reports. Glad the presentation went well
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Todd,
Thanks for Your time and effort in writing up this report
and keeping us update with the events .
Congrats. Glad that everything went well .
Cheers,
Mateo -
thanks Todd for the update (didnt know that my numb script was funny, cant wait for the video
)the Texas Beef Jerky was hilarious
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Thanks for the great updates, Todd.
Almost makes me feel like I'm there
Looking forward to the nest one
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Todd,
Thanks for the great report. Much appreciated!
Fred
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I second the above...!!
Thanks for the report, Todd...! Much appreciated indeed..!!
Looking forward to see the videos..!!
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Thanks Todd.
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Thanks for filling us in Todd!
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found some pics from basecamp - http://picasaweb.google.com/androo54/3DBC
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Yeah, thanks Todd! I wondered how my friend Alex's talk went! Sounds like fun...
Cheers,
- CraigD -
"The press attending Basecamp have been told there will be no product announcements made during the conference." (via aecnews.com)
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Oh well, I suppose I'll have to continue keeping quiet about alpha-testing the NURBS Toolset. Oh Rats!!!
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@alan fraser said:
Oh well, I suppose I'll have to continue keeping quiet about alpha-testing the NURBS Toolset. Oh Rats!!!
Alan, you...
Anssi
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Many thanks for taking the time to give us all a glimpse into what has been going on as well as your willingness to be open about yourself.
In addition thanks for all of your great work on rubies that help us all.
Hope you enjoyed the last day.
Karl
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Now that basecamp has wrapped up, has anyone come across a wrap up blog/post. The blog is empty. Don't know if possible future features were not shown, or were shown but fell under NDA.
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Speaking for myself, I've been really tired at the end of each "3DBC" day and I won't actually be home until next week (I'm writing this from a hotel in San Francisco). And Gaieus, who set up the blog about the meeting, was unable to access the 'net from the Googleplex or his hotel.
Give us all a bit of time and we'll spill the beans, such as they are. Now if you'll excuse me, it's been an exhausting day and I'm going to bed.
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Speaking of beans: Alan...that's one of the buckets of food you should steer clear of :`)
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Absolutely Tom. Also, one should never smoke after partaking of a bucket of beans.
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Woke up in my own bed this morning, I am back.
So much to to say.
I had a great time and pretty much met and spoke with everyone and more, there indeed is news but I need to get all my little obscure notes written on napkins, business cards etc together so as to get my facts together before I say anything.
Meeting SCF members in the flesh was the real hi-light to me, we have some awesome folk on this site and it was my pleasure to make their acquaintance.My general view of 3DBC is a very favorable one and I believe it should be an annual event, a Sketchup pilgrimage that every serious user should have the opportunity to attend at least once. I agree with Coen, Mike and Csaba that a European destination needs to be the venue for the next one.
As for the Google team, they were all very friendly and accommodating, so unassuming and approachable. I had open and engaging chats with everyone from the Sketchup founder (Brad Schell) to the newly employed SU staff as if we have been friends for years.
I will be posting much more info and details as soon as I get myself organized.
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