Arch, the Angels Sing

By Bill Needle

Some photos compliments of Aaron Currier and Bill Blinn...thanks guys!

October, 2002

In what only seemed like a few months since we last met in Kansas City at the Ventura Summit…(oh wait a minute, it was only a few months!)…we headed to the Golden, er metallic, Arch of a city—St. Louis. But before we talk about StL, let’s just comment about the Detroit Metropolitan airport that we flew into first. The Metro has some things other airports should follow (with a $2 billion price tag that Detroit spent as part of their Capital Improvement Program). Take, for instance, what to do with a looong, dark tunnel connecting terminal C with A. OK, add the usual horizontal-escalator-people-mover then add an entire wall of frosted glass with illuminating colors to the stereo sound of water and chirping sounds. Tres chic. Then, watch the parabolic jumping spouts of water located at the main hub of Terminal A. It was so fascinating that people actually stopped to watch a water fountain. And, alas, what a concept. Light rail service inside the terminal. Enough of those beeping golf carts already!

 
  Wow, is this the funny house or is a rainbow
  of Pantone colors coming my way? Even the
  camera couldn't focus on the psychedelic.

After a quick one hour flight from Detroit we touched down at St. Louis’ Lambert airport. No sign of funky stuff here. Just your usual check in counters and a plethora of rules to follow that is so important that it's placed right on their home page (possible Web Pages that Suck candidate). Reminds me of swimming pool rules including the infamous “No spouting of water allowed”. Now how to get to the conference hotel? Well, cue ten-time conference attendee Gary Bonder and wife Jeanie who were on Tom Anzai’s flight to St. Louis from Detroit and who graciously volunteered to drive Tom in their rental car. Great timing! (Gary, we’ll call you to synchronize our flight arrivals at the next CorelWorld.)

  The Bonder Limousine Service at your service. Yes, 
you too can get your picture showcased in my article... 
as long as you give Tom a ride from the airport. 

The Sheraton City Center

When you drive up to the Sheraton City Center, you’re confused as to which way to park your car and enter the building. Do you drive to the front door? Drive up to one of the parking garage areas that were located on the second, third, or fourth floors? Order a bucket of wings at Jacques Sports Bar and watch your car from the street? Maybe it’s because of the storied history of the hotel’s building that confused us. The hotel is located in a multi-renovated building that was once a JC Penney warehouse, as well as an eyesore of a building that underwent a facade facial in 1984. The owner must have been an eccentric as one outside wall features Roman statues and aqueduct looking arches. Problem is, what the heck is the 1964 World's Fair Unisphere symbol doing on top of the roman column?

  The front wall of the hotel with two Roman servants carrying an angel
  god...with the New York World's Fair symbol above her? What the??

That wasn't the only oddity. Take for instance that the fitness center and large swimming pool was located on the top floor. Did I say swimming pool? By gosh, I hope to heck that it doesn't spring a leak one day and rain on the parade of guests on the 12th floor...and the 11th...and the 10th... The top floor was the 13th (yes, they actually had a 13th floor!) and was also the location of CorelWorld headquarters and seminar rooms (as well as the Dallas Cowboys All You Can Eat Breakfast-After-Their-Win Buffet). Once you got past the habit of wanting to go down from your room to the conference, everything was looking up.

OK, at least the rooms were fantastic. Each room had nice beds, two TV's, a fridge and a separate lounge area with a pull-out couch and sofa. All in all, a great place for a conference. Just mind the expensive phone call room charges though (must be pooled, pun intended, to pay for damages when that there swimming pool does spring a leak one day).

Conference Notes

Host, Rick Altman, stuck to the token Crash Courses on Sunday offering two-hour sessions on CorelDRAW 11 (Tom Anzai), Photo-Paint 11 (Tom Anzai), Dream Weaver (Rick Altman), Ventura 10 (Bob van Duuren), and Digital Photography (Bill Blinn). Two presentations were down for Tom with four to go. Even better was the day-ending CorelWorld Happy Hour at Jacques Sport Bar downstairs. Heck, even some cow girls from WY strolled in the saloon to say howdy to the CorelWorld crew. These two were teachers at a high school who teach...hold onto your britches...CorelDRAW and Photo-Paint to real live, young students! Well I'll be darned. Hey Corel Marketing! Hallo! ECHO!...echo! Anyone home?!

 
Conference photographer, Aaron D. Currier, 
testing his camera's self timer with WY teachers, 
Sally and Kim. Or is that Sim and Kally? 

This year's conference featured a flip-flop schedule with Ventura and Web topics in the first half of the week and Corel Graphics Suite topics in the last half. Suffice to say, the i's had to be dotted and the t's crossed on Monday through Wednesday. Some familiar faces were absent as several Ventura diehards had chosen the Ventura Summit earlier in June as the conference to drain their travel budgets. What, XML has already turned you guys off? Was XML ever turned on? Wait with the rest of us, and we'll see I gather.

Corel, Party of Five

When we heard that Corel was sending no less than five key members of the Graphics Suite team, we had to see it to believe it. At the Happy Hour reception, we met Shawn Lipstein, User Experience dude and Paul Turnbull, Product Mumbo Jumbo (is it PDM? PGM? Pon?) for R.A.V.E. Both were very receptive to hearing about user feedback during the conference. We asked for their personal phone numbers so we could call 24/7, but they didn't bite.

And, hey, what about the Wednesday keynote speaker, Graham Brown, Executive VP of Product Development. Finally, we met a Corel employee who had gray hair like the rest of us! His biggest decision was whether to wear the suit jacket or not before the keynote. Ah, good man. He decided to chuck the jacket and go with the black undershirt. Graham commented that he was used to talking to lawyers on the non-graphics side. Must be the dark side. The audience's biggest response was Graham's comment that Corel was in their third year of actually having a corporate budget. Whoa, what progress. Guess they have paid off all of Marlen's Corel Gala gowns. He went on to say things like developers are no longer permitted to request features (hey, bring back text, merge back...that was completely useless), there will be more consultation with users, he explained something about internal culture (?) in a petrie dish, the fact that you can't say “the best” in Germany (I guess a lot of things suck over there), the doom of software piracy (ahoy matey), and the importance of SVG as a way of putting vector graphics on the web. He concluded by demonstrating his new Grafico on a tablet PC.

Three other Corelians joined the conference on Wednesday: Tony Severnuck, Lead Program Manager for CorelDRAW 11, Joanne Runte Line Manager of I Forgot What She Told Me (whose line is it anyway?), and Steve Sammon, Graphics Designer and goalie for the Corel hockey team (thought I'd throw that last one in there since I'm partial to Canadians, eh). We were saved by the regal personality of Joanne. How could you get upset at a person like her? Now, Tony and Steve...the geek and the artistique...that's a different story. Anyway, a strong contingent from Corel right from day one to the last day six. They even brought a whack of designer.com t-shirts, pencils, pads, fridge clips, and Corel hats. Finally, some marketing freebies. Let's do it again, shall we?!

A Day in the Life of a CorelWorld Social

Perhaps you've never attended a CorelWorld conference and wonder what we do after hours? Well, let's use the series of photos below to tell a story about a typical evening out.

  Once a restaurant is chosen, the patrons generally
  lack excitement after a full belly of food. Here,
  Dublin, Ireland attendee Gerry and Texan, Maria
  would rather be baggin' some zzz's. Oregon
  resident, John, at the far right is not faring any
  better as he starts to nod off.  Heck, even the
  diner on the far left is being put to sleep by
  the inactivity of the CorelWorld table.

Even young Aaron is finding it hard to get in the cha-cha 
mood while a band plays on stage. Edmontonian, Ken, 
gives the rest of the patrons the evil eye. The girl in the 
background nervously bites her nail as she anxiously awaits 
the exit of the CorelWorld table so that she can finally 
enjoy what's left of her dinner and hear some decent tunes. 

  But then we are pleasantly reminded that Paul Huntington
  is in the house to break up the monotony. He takes the bull
  (Ken in this case) by the horns to shoo in some fun and frolic!

The mood swing (or is it the empty glasses on the table?) 
inspires even the host, Rick, to start slammin' the tambourine 
to the tunes. Bob is smiling because he knows 
Bill Needle will write about this one. 

  With painful expressions and the chagrin of the
  other restaurant customers, the CorelWorld
  table insists on taking over the band. I think
  that the guy playing the guitar is smiling either
  because their mike isn't turned on or because
  they don't know their mike isn't turned on.
  Geez, I hope not.

The end of the night ends with the crew abandoning the shuttle 
bus and insisting on conga-lining their way back to the hotel. 
Maria!...watch out for that...pole! Oops, too late... {!bong!}. 
And how come Allan, the St. Louis Blues traitor, is smiling? 

What to Do in St. Louie

OK, we'll get it out of our system right now. One of the things you have to do is to visit the Arch. It's something that you have to see up close to appreciate it's 630-foot, steel structure. You can take the claustrophobic-inducing elevator, er tram, up to the top for $8 and look through small windows to the land and Mississippi below. On windy days, you can also experience an up to 8 foot sway. Um, not for me. I get dizzy hopping from one foot to the other.

The Arch by day...

...and the Arch by night. Ewwww, ahhhhh!

Into sports? Then St. Louis is your kind of city as it hosts the Rams, Cardinals, and Blues. Fortunately, the Savvis Center arena was located across the street from the hotel and tickets started at $15. A bunch of Canadians escorted some attendees to the game in the cheap seats to watch St. Louis beat the Chicago Black Hawks 4-3 on a game winning goal by Blues Keith Tkachuk in the last few minutes of the game. Hey, the game is played the exact same way up here in Canada with a bloody fight in the first two minutes of the game. Heard about the fight where a hockey game broke out?

  Game on! Denver resident, Eric Weber, takes on all comers in a
  table-top hockey game inside the arena. You can tell by his look of
  determination as to whether he'll let a Canadian beat him in a
  friendly game. Not! Guess he's still ticked that the Colorado
  Rock-heads got beat out by Scottie's team last year. <s>