Conference Season

It is conference season for creatives. It seems that this time of year is when all the different creative industries, particularly in the visual arts, have their conferences. I have noticed this before and this year it really stands out for me as so many of them have moved online. Some are available for reduced access cost, some for free, and some for a hybrid of free to watch live but pay to watch later. Some of the conferences are ones that I’ve wanted to go to in the past and yet couldn’t justify the time off or the expense.

This year, because some of the conferences are online, and free in some capacity, I’ve actually signed up for a few and there are two more I’m considering. One of the conferences I signed up for, that I’ve not heard of before is the View Conference. It’s got some great presentations and discussions. Not knowing about it, I would never have thought of going to it. It’s an international VFX and computer graphics conference in Italy. Because the live presentations are free if you sign up, I have had a chance to see some of the presentations.

I, of course, signed up for BCon20, this is Blender’s user conference. I had wanted to go to their first ever US conference that they were holding this year. Unfortunately, due to circumstances, that got canceled as did their regular conference that they hold in Amsterdam. So Blender is holding an abbreviated version online this year. I’m quite excited to get to be a part of it. I even ordered the Comfort Box, not to be opened until October 30, the day of the conference so we can all feel like we’re really connected. And no, I haven’t opened the box.

I signed up for Adobe Max. I wasn’t sure I was going to bother because of when all the sessions are. It’s a middle of the week event and I have the day job. I decided to go ahead and sign up because maybe I’d find something I could watch at lunch or in the evening. Even with my mother’s enthusiasm over some of the sessions that were scheduled, I didn’t expect to really watch much of it. Then the email for the schedule came and I decided I might watch more than I expected.

The keynote for Adobe Max happened to be at my lunch time, and a little after, just right in a break in my meetings. Which is fairly miraculous given how packed with meetings my Tuesday is. I have to say, I’m pretty stunned. I have the Creative Cloud suite. I’ve had it for several years and pay the subscription. I had been considering whether or not to continue with it and recently found that though the application I was using to do what I have been doing in Photoshop does work, it has some quirks that I don’t enjoy. So with that in mind I had decided, I would stick with the Adobe stuff, for now. And then I saw the keynote with a lot of the features, new and improved, and even maybe some that are already there and I was blown away. I know I don’t use the Adobe suite near to what it is capable of and now I think maybe I use two percent of what it can do on a really ambitious day. I will say the presentation has helped to solidify my intention to maintain my subscription.

The other two conferences I am thinking of signing up for are the Zbrush Summit which in the past was held the end of September first of October. I wasn’t sure if they were going to have it this year and then I saw the post announcing it. They have moved it to the first weekend in November and it will be all online. I’m also considering Autodesk University which is the Autodesk user conference. They make AutoCAD, 3DS Max, Maya, and Mudbox. Even though I no longer use their software I may still watch some of it, many of the concepts will be the same for other software and I can still learn something. That one is also in November.

I looked at the Sigraph conference because that is a big deal and that one turns out to not be free, even the online version. And it’s a little pricier than I am willing to pay. Especially since I would just be watching for curiosity and vague interest sake. A lot of what gets presented are technical break-throughs that I am not in any position to take advantage of so…

There are book and publishing conferences happening or have happened, in the last few weeks to the upcoming few weeks as well. And I don’t doubt there are a lot of other conferences happening. It feels near impossible to get to participate in half of what there is available. If you are looking for a bonus from the pandemic, the conference season might just be it.

So, yes, I missed last week’s post. I had a big project that took much of the week and then some time to recover. Though I managed a little relaxation. I took about an hour and finished up a pastel drawing I’ve been working at all year. It is from a picture I took while I was in Australia last year.

The big project was the office/art room. All my pieces for setting up the new desks arrived on a Sunday and though I told myself I needed to let it wait until after my test, I also knew that the difference it would make in my comfort, and productivity for the day job were significant enough that it really would be worth it to get the desk swap done. And that’s what I did. It was not a small feat. It took two and half hours just to unload the two big bookcases. Everything ended up in my living room and dining room while I made space to assemble the desks, one at a time, and move the furniture around. Once the desks were in their places and the other pieces where they were going, then it took a day or two to move everything back into place. The nice thing about working from home is I was able to do a little bit at a time during the day during breaks. Get up for water, move a stack of books, go to the bathroom, put the books on the shelf.

I’m glad to have the office re-do done. As much work as it was, I think this is really going to work better. While my desk for the day job and my desk for my personal stuff are right next to each other, they function much more autonomously from each other. I turn one way to do my day job, and then at the end of the day, I slide the keyboard under the desk and turn the other way for my personal work. Even with the major furniture change done, I still have a lot to do in the office. So much still needs to be gone through and sorted for what to keep and what not to keep as well as where to put some things that don’t really have a proper home. That part will wait until after the test.

The test. The study is going well. I am progressing as I had hoped which is good. I would like to put a stake in the ground or dart on the calendar and say absolutely this is when the test is. I prefer the average of my practice test scores to be a bit higher before I schedule the test. That means, I probably won’t be sitting for it in the next week. Maybe in two?

With that in mind, you can guess what most of my time will be taken up with for the next couple of weeks. I’m still trying to squeeze in some Blender time and some guitar time. I purchased a course for Christmas music on guitar because it sounded fun and I like Christmas music so I may try to get started on that when I take a break from studying for my test. I’ll have to let you know how that goes. In the mean time, I’ve included some photos of the office rework, or mess I made, and the pastel picture that I finished. Enjoy.