Within every profession there are many (sometime too many) communities that you can join, groups you can take part in, associations that you can become a member of. But what’s the point – REALLY?!  I’ve embarked upon a journey to build community around one of my very favorite application (Adobe After Effects) as a response to the overwhelming discovery that there was no community, association, or UG (as Adobe refers to User Groups).

My journey began when I saw a post on twitter by Trent Armstrong (the founder of the Dallas AEUG) that he was headed out to talk at the DFW AEUG.  To be quite honest I was rather jealous that I couldn’t be there (being 280 miles away in North West Houston.)  My response to this was proactive googling and scouring all over the web to find something like that here in my neck of the woods.  Toiling over old post of people looking for the same sort of group here in town I made two discoveries:

1. There is no Group of After Effects Users meeting in Houston
2. There is really NO Central Hub for AEUG’s to standardize and share information.

Hey – it’s been a wild month!  I’ve been so super busy – but I had to tell you about some things that have been developing, kind of quickly.  First let me back up and tell you about my love for After Effects – I’ve used compositing applications for well over 15 years now, from the dark days of Borris on an *edit box – later to combustion, and now on After Effects (AE CS3).  I love AE!!!  But I’ve found that most editors have no idea what to do within this robust application and use it more for a glorified filter box that they pass video clips to their editor (my friend who’s know for this shall remain nameless!)

I see AE as much more – and this didn’t really come about until I finished reading “The DV Rebel’s Guide” by Stu, that’s when this application became less of a motion graphics world (which I’m still growing as an Mographer) and more of a real ON LINE space, that you can composite in 2.5D.  I feel that if editors could really get beyond their fear of the interface – and dig in to the app as that kind of space, then their productions would really have the shine that they deserve!

So – I’m taking Powered along with me in this journey to help users get to know AE, and get existing users of AE involved in a community so that we can share our knowledge and open doors for more people to become better at using this all important application. Because I live in the Houston area – I have been looking for an AE user group, to find that not only is there no AE group, but there’s no Adobe group for Video / Production users either!  I’m taking small steps to correct this – I’ve started a FreindFeed Room for Adobe After Effects. And I’m planning on attending the Dallas (DFW AEUG) in September to see what happens at an existing group.  I’d also like to make it clear that I don’t really want to be the Head of this group, but I will be until we can assemble some kind of structure and body.

I’m totally open to suggestions regarding locations and times and what kind of topics that you’d like to talk about or see spoken about at a group like this!  Please email me (bradparler @ gmail . com) or follow me on twitter ( @big_b_rad ) and DM me with your suggestion – Please also include your zip code so that I can start mapping intrest in this group and find locations central to people attending…

Thank,
bp