Hi Everyone!

Hope you all recovered from Siggraph and are enjoying your Summer as much as I am! While I was a little disappointed not to have Softimage in the spotlight of the main Siggraph stage this year, I none the less had a great show. This year was a little different though I must say... After a lot of preparation, we were kind-of thrown a curve ball with some last minute change of plans so most of my time ended up spent in the private demo suites. I wasn't supposed to be in the private rooms the entire show but after Thiago Costa's Lagoa Physics video hit the web that's pretty much what everyone wanted to see. Initially Softimage had plenty of theater time alongside Max and Maya for the new Production Suite demos but that changed quickly. With the excitement Lagoa was generating we suddenly were flooded with requests to see it up close and personal. The easy thing of course would be to just put it in the theater for a in-depth demo for all to see but there was a snag. Because Siggraph was the last week of a fiscal quarter at Autodesks we ran into those pesky revenue recognition laws which meant we couldn't show anything public until it was officially announced. Bummer to put it mildly. Anyway, the only solution we could think of was to do private NDA demos, so that is what I did.... to just about every major studio who was at the show. I think everyone that saw it left most impressed and for some a little annoyed they hadn't seen more of ICE in the past! So sorry to miss a lot of you at the show, I definitely had a full mailbox wondering what the heck happened to Mark and Softimage!

After the show was over I immediately hit the road and flew around to visit some more studios and schools around the country and then finally took some time off to put a few more hours on my VW Bus restoration. Hopefully come November you can chart my progress as I drive the thing from Florida to California... at about 50 MPH of course!

Ok well enough of that, the main reason I wanted write today was that while it's a bit short notice we've managed to pull together a user group meeting in New York City this week! The trip was a bit last minute for me but with a call to Phill Avanzato a couple days ago the ball started rolling and he was able to secure a funky location for us to meet at. So the event will be this Thursday, Sept. 2nd at Teneleven (171 Avenue C) it's a cool bar in the village and should be a great place for a meetup. We'll start things off at 7pm with some drinks and pizza and go from there. Im thinking it will be a little on the informal side, I really just want to show you all what's going on with Lagoa and some other new stuff we'll be shipping really SOON.. I'm really hoping that some of you can bring some interesting things you've done to show too. Either some completed pieces or maybe a little demo of something cool you've done in Soft. I have about an hours worth of new stuff to show so please if you have something cool to share bring it with you!! We'll have a projector and my laptop or just bring your own and plug it in.
Well I hope to see all my New York friends Thursday evening!. I'm just getting ready to land at JFK and the "nice" lady on the airplane is telling me to shutdown my laptop so I guess that's a wrap!! Wait... the pilot just said it's 99 degrees outside. Did we get routed to Orlando??!!

mark