SFMograph - San Francisco User Group

We are about to kick off a new motion graphics / visual effects user group here in San Francisco. Adobe has been kind enough to donate their incredible space at 601 Townsend, so our first "SFMograph" event will be held on March 20th. We are happy to announce that two of the original CoSA After Effects engineers, David Simons and Dan Wilk, will be on hand as our featured presenters. Dave and Dan continue to work on After Effects along with other future technology in the "Dynamic Media Advanced Product Development" group at Adobe. They will be on hand, along with Chris Prosser, the AE Engineering Manager, to talk about the history of After Effects, answer questions, and provide tricks and tips. It should be killer. Along with Dave and Dan, I will be presenting an in-depth breakdown of some recent work we have completed at Phoenix, as well as our monthly "plug-in of the month" presentation. We will be posting more information about the user group on our website over the next week, www.sfmograph.com, including more information about the sponsors and raffle, and a mailing list is currently in place.

The philosophy behind this user group is that it is a user group by users for users. When I first moved to San Francisco to finish up school, I began attending a local After Effects/ElectricImage user group held at a studio called Entasis (now Fluid Technology). Unlike other "user groups", it was not based on product demos by a sales guy. It was a true users group. I have had the opportunity to travel to user groups around the world (New York, LA, Seattle, Tokyo, London, etc.), and have never found a user group like the old Entasis meetings. The information I learned and the contacts I gained were invaluable to helping kick off my carreer. I now want to bring this spirit back to Bay Area through SFMograph, and build a strong community of artists working in the world of motion. We are not limiting this user group to just motion graphics. When I started my career I never heard the term motion graphics. We were animators with design backgrounds. The current "state of the art" in motion graphics involves design, animation, visual effects, 3D animation, live action shooting, etc. We want this user group to spread into these varied disciplines so we can learn from each other and find outside resources who can help realize any vision. We are also interested having presenters from the perspective of our clients, so we plan on having ad agency creatives and producers, VFX supervisors, marketing execs, etc.

Thanks for your time, and I hope to see you on the 20th.

Matt Silverman
Creative Director
Phoenix Editorial | Designs
190 Pacific Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94111
415.394.7777
www.phoenixedit.com