PhotoShopWorld
2001 was a fantastic experience! Over 2000 PhotoShop aficionados converged
at the LA Convention Center for the activities on Friday evening and all
day Saturday and all day Sunday. PhotoShopWorld 2001 began on Friday evening
with a no host "Kick Off Party" with lots of tasty munchies
and live music. Following the party was the "Instructor Jam Session."
They began the Session by introducing the "Dream Team" Instructors
who ran onto the stage in Sweat Suits ala the LA  Lakers.
Immediately following the introductions we were treated to an unexpected,
but impressive performance by the Laker Girls. Once that excitement was
over, the "Dream Team" Instructors each gave a quick paced 10-minute
presentation of their favorite tips. The last speaker was Russell Brown
who gave his presentation via his CD ROM and threw out a box full of T-shirts
to the wild encouragement of the crowd. This was followed by the "PhotoShopWorld
Guru Awards" which recognized excellence in PhotoShop design in the
categories
of Print, Web Design, Multimedia, Photography, Illustration, Artistic,
Commercial, and General Photocopy Design. Very impressive was the work
of Best of Show Winner, Martha Calderon, of Bogota, Columbia. Saturday
morning activities began with a Keynote presentation by Adobe's Vice President,
Bryan Lamkin. The Keynote was not that informative and was presented in
haste by Bryan Lamkin because Ron Okamoto, who was on the original schedule,
was hired away by Apple and began work the following Monday. After the
keynote, the conference sessions took over our attention. Most of the
instructors were excellent and besides seeing the sessions, each conference
attendee received a Conference Workbook and both Saturday (363 pages)
and Sunday (244 pages) containing all the speeches of each conference.
This
allowed for following the presentations without the necessity of taking
notes. My favorite presenters at PhotoShopWorld 2001 were Scott Kelby,
Ben Wilmore, Jack Davis, and Robb Kerr. I also found the entire faculty
extremely accommodating to all questions asked during their talks and
they each seemed genuinely interested that everyone gain the most out
of the conference that they could. I was also deeply appreciative of Scott
Kelby’s follow through to my request to get 25 copies of the All
Adobe PhotoShop Special Issue of Mac Design Magazine donated to the Long
Beach MacGraphics Group for distribution to our members at our May 3rd
meeting. The magazines were packed up for shipment back to Florida, but
they were given to me through the efforts of some diligent NAPP employees.
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