Well our first WBVUG meeting came and went but not without good conversation and food! Joe Carney, Tom Dubill and I unfortunately were the only three who were able to make it to the meeting. If anyone went to Union Station but could not find us, I'm sorry we missed you. Joe and I met face-to-face for the first time after many emails back and forth working to get this group together and to find a meeting place. All of us got there between 4:00 and 4:30. We decided to eat at the food court so we each grabbed a bite and started right in with conversation.

I don't think there was one silent moment the whole time we were there until we broke up around 6:45. Joe came prepared with a laptop with Vegas installed. He attempted to demo a wireless internet link via his cell phone (cool!) but was unable to establish a connection. As Joe pulled all this equipment from his bag, I was wondering when the security guards were going to come over to make sure we weren't doing anything wrong. We talked about audio equipment, video cameras, projects we have done, and how we each got into doing videos. The first chance we get to have a meeting with a projector, I will show a six minute video I did for Tom's Bachelor party this past March and we can have a Q&A session to explain how I did the video. Part of the video involved green screening in which I utilized the chroma-keying capabilities of Vegas.

Tom has worked in the audio/visual field for some time for the government so he and Joe reminisced a bit about different equipment. I have been working with computers, not audio/visual equipment like them two, so I did not recognize many of the names they mentioned. No worries. We will all learn from each other as our meetings progress. We also shared web site information which would be valuable to do at future meetings.

All things considered, I think the meeting went well. As I have said before, August is a bad month to try to get together due to vacations. I look forward to meeting all of you at future meetings. Currently, the next meeting scheduled for September is actually a DVUG meeting. I have spoken with Merrill Hessel, the contact for DVUG, and it sounds like it will be well worth it for all of us to attend their next meeting on September 21st. I don't intend to piggyback off their meetings all the time. I just think it is a good idea for us to learn from them as well since they have presentations pertaining to filmmaking in general. Check out their site at www.dvug.org.

In the meantime . . .

WE NEED PLACES TO MEET!!! Joe and I will be scouting around for potential meeting places but if you know of ANY available places please let me know.

I hope you all have had a great summer and I'll see you next month!

Feel free to contact me or Joe at anytime.

Thanks!

Mickey Grackin
OIC Productions