Google SketchUp 3D Basecamp 2010 and SketchUpArtists

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basecamp

The Third Google SketchUp Basecamp was held 1-3 of September 2010, in the heart of SketchUp country, the city of Boulder in Colorado. I was really honored to be representing SketchUpArtists there and to be among 250 of the most creative and talented SketchUp users from all over the world. Above all It was a great opportunity to catch up with some old friends and make many new ones.

The conference itself began with an introduction by Aidan Chopra (Author and SketchUp Evangelist) which was then followed with the ‘Keynote Presentation’ by John Bacus (Product Manager for Google SketchUp). To the delight of those present, John took the opportunity to announce the surprise launch of Google SketchUp version 8. There was then a presentation on some of the new features in this release by Scott and Bryce. We then had a little celebration afterwards to celebrate the 10th birthday of SketchUp, with cake and champagne.

On day two we had the ‘Unconference’ sessions, this meant that the format itself was an informal one, so instead of having a pre-determined schedule of session discussions the ‘Unconference’ approach relied on attendees to set the agenda or how Google put it “We get together, people suggest topics for sessions, we make a list, everyone votes to decide which topics are the most popular, and the ‘Unconference’ begins!“

There was some dismay to start with in the crowd “how is this going to work?“ I overheard someone say. When people started coming out with their ideas, a three week conference wouldn’t have been enough to accommodate all the ideas that were being suggested! Topics ranged from application of Google SketchUp in the film industry, architecture, stage design, various techniques, visualizing possibilities, technical aspects of SketchUp, Ruby Scripts and new creative ways to make money with SketchUp…

Here is the full list of the eventual Unconference Sessions that took place at Basecamp. Some have a few very useful key notes.

The third day at Basecamp was devoted to presentations from Friends of SketchUp – partners and developers of great SketchUp add-ons and plugins software . Companies that had traveled to Boulder included Reallusion (iClone), Materialise (3D Printing Plugin), Abvent (Render-IN), ArtVPS (Shaderlight) and many others. Here You can see the complete list of the companies that took part. Once again there were more sessions going on simultaneously and it was really quite impossible to follow it all. A video of each session would have been a good idea, for people to look back on, as much valuable information was exchanged and shared, but you never know how these things are going to pan out; maybe next time!

Finally we would like to take this opportunity to thank John Bacus and all the folks from Google for inviting me and for organizing and making this such a wonderful event. We at SketchUpArtists are already looking forward to the next Basecamp, maybe in 2012, and hope it will be held in Boulder again, a great place in a beautiful part of the world. In the meantime we would like to share some of the images from the trip there.

The entrance to the Dairy Center – day one