Also, thanks again to Chris Fullmer for his most excellent quote.

A

Hi folks,

It's live!

http://sketchup.google.com/3dbasecamp

Sorry it took us all day to get the site up -- it was a launch, two newsletters and a blog post, and we wanted to make sure we didn't mess anything up. In our defense, it's still before midnight in Boulder

I think CraigD is going to elaborate some more in this thread, but please let me know what you think!

Aidan

"a diverse group of planetizens trying to learn from eachother and expand the collective human intellgience through SketchUpping"

That's fantastic, Chris. Do you mind if I quote you on the 3DBC micro-website we're building? I'm not sure where it will appear, but it's too good to leave out : )

@lewiswadsworth said:

There is a kind of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory excitement to all of this....

I like that -- that's one of my all-time favorite books. It's a good thing we aren't making anyone buy 6,000 chocolate bars to have a shot at coming, though.

Oh -- and we are planning to have a band, but we're not sure who, yet. Anyone have any suggestions? We're thinking something between CraigD with an iPod, and U2...

Hi everybody,

CraigD let me know that there was some chatter on the SCF about Basecamp, so I thought I'd poke my head in...

We're currently working on an idea: we're going to rent some giant Dutch floating cranes to move California around the tip of Chile, anchoring it just off the coast of Portugal

It wasn't our intention to exclude anyone based on geography. Believe it or not, having a successful Basecamp at the Googleplex is probably the best chance we have for eventually having one in Europe. Headquarters offers free space, cheaper food, better technical amenities, and a host of other things we wouldn't have access to anywhere else, which gives us a better chance of being successful. It's our thinking that the key to having more Basecamps is to have the most successful (first post-acquisition) Basecamp we can. Having it in California gives us the best chance at success. We would LOVE to have a Basecamp in Europe -- believe me. it's just not where our main office is located.

Regarding a SUC event (such as the one Mike is talking about), I can tell you that it would take five guys with heavy weapons to keep me (and a bunch of us Sketchuppers) from attending. That's not a promise or a guarantee; just a bit of friendly encouragement to do everything in your power to stage one. Precedent would also be a powerful motivator in any decision about the location of future Basecamps... As to sponsorship or other "official" Google participation in a SUC-organized event, please just let us know (an email to me at: aidanc at google dot com) what you have in mind, and we'll see what's possible.

About the random invitation process... it's probably best explained by a story: This last year, the Colorado Rockies (the Denver professional baseball team) made it to the World Series (so-named because it's the final playoff, but badly-named because there's only one non-US team in the league: Toronto). Tickets were made available by means of a "first-come, first-served" online system. Of course, the system was overwhelmed, the whole thing crashed, and chaos ensued. It was probably the most unfair distribution of tickets in the history of professional baseball. We didn't want this to happen to us, and we certainly didn't want it to happen to our best users.

The problem is that we honestly don't know how much interest there will be in this event. It's free and it's at the Googleplex, which will probably draw a crowd (events at headquarters are always free, and besides that, we thought that charging would make it even harder for farther-away people to attend). The universe of SU users is a lot bigger than it used to be, which means there will likely be more interest than there was in 2005. On the other hand, it's still not entirely cheap to travel to Mountain View and stay in a hotel for three nights, and taking three days off isn't an easy decision for most professionals. We just don't know who'll show up.

The fact that the event is free also made us worry that lots of people would sign up but then change their minds, leaving us with a lot of empty seats. We're hoping that having been randomly selected from a large pool will cause people to think twice about giving up the opportunity without letting us know in time to make sure there's someone to take their place.

We decided on a random selection process because it will yield two important things: a geographically-random sampling of SU users, and a fair, transparent system for people to sign up. If not too many people "put their names in the hat", then almost everyone gets to come. If there's a huge response, then we end up with a good distribution of familiar faces and "newly-converted". It seems the fairest way to proceed.

In the interest of full disclosure, one more fact: We've reserved some spots for a small number of presenters, press and super-users who we felt have made the largest contributions to SU's success over the years. The process of choosing these folks was naturally subjective, but included people from our QA, development, sales and education teams. These people have already been contacted, and we're waiting to see how many of them would like to come. We didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, so we asked them not to broadcast their special invitations to the world. The random selection process is for the roughly 250 remaining spots.

As for the program for Basecamp 2008, Jon, Dusty, Bryce, John, James and I are still working on it. We were all at Basecamp 2005, so we remember what made that event so much fun, and so successful. We haven't announced any details of the program yet, but I can fill you in on the tentative plan:

Day 1: Basic Training in the morning for new users who need to be caught up. There were a lot of these folks in 2005, and they told us they would have benefited from some instruction beforehand to better understand the rest of the proceedings. We expect more experienced users to arrive in time for the lunchtime welcome, which might allow them to save on one night's hotel stay.

The afternoon will feature concurrent sessions, organized into "new user" and "more experienced user" tracks. For example, "Smart modeling (low-poly, grouping, scenes, etc)" for newbies, and "Best of Ruby" for more advanced folks. In the evening, a huge party (I'm advocating for a bonfire and a roast beast, but we'll see : )

Day 2: More concurrent sessions, organized the same way as the previous afternoon's. There will be a recommended track for newer users, and always something for the more knowledgeable among us. The sessions themselves are a mix of the most popular ones from 2005 (Daniel Tal's Sandbox extravaganza, Tyson's Photoshop wizardry) and some new ones on LayOut, Style Builder, geomodeling and a couple of things we can't discuss just yet. It should offer something for everyone.

There will also be a big, open lab with projection capabilities, lots of tables, power and (I assume) snacks. The lab was one of the most exciting places to be in 2005, and we're trying to make it even better.

Day 3: We're calling this "SketchUpalooza" for now, but here's the gist: an all-day, hands on, sleeves-rolled-up, working-in-SketchUp design charrette. That's all we can really say right now, but the intent is to give everyone the opportunity to see how other people work, get feedback from the SU team and each other, solve problems right away, and put into practice some of the things they've picked up in the previous two days. There will also be a steady stream of mini-presentations, in a separate room, on specific tips, tools and techniques. These will be short, directed and entirely optional -- go to the ones that interest you the most.

None of this is absolutely final, but we're pretty happy with what we've got so far. That said, please feel free to weigh in on this thread -- that's why I'm filling you all in. We value your opinions, and want to make this the best event we can.

Whew. That might be the longest thing I've written since the Dummies book : )

Please let me know what you think of all this!

Thanks,

Aidan