By Bill Needle
We left you off in Part I: The Journey Begins talking about the first two days of CorelWorld '99 in Orlando, Florida. We call this article “Part II: Venturing Forth” for the sake of the Ventura portion of the conference for Days 3-5. Actually, Day 3 is called a “hump” day (easy now) because it contained both Draw and Ventura seminars. In other words, it's probably the busiest day of the conference involving the creative-graphic right-brainers to the document publishing left-brainers. A perfect match? Read on and and we'll see.
Before we leave the second day, one
thing is definitely worth mentioning. At CorelWorld '98 in San Diego a suggestion was made
to the host, Rick Altman, that a physical event be included in the agenda at the next
conference. Now, I don't know if it's coincidence but the hotel that Rick decided upon just
happened to have a sand volleyball court right next to the dining hall (actually a tent
that would entice Cirque du
Soleil). “Tuesday at 5:00 
p.m.” said the conference guide. Shoes unnecessary. Shorts and T-shirt
advisable.
Now I know Rick was a U.S. ranked tennis player so how well could he play v-ball? Picture this. High school gym class and it's time to learn all about volleyball in two weeks. Yah, right. Gym class merely categorized its participants by who perceived the ball to be an “object”, to those participants who became “one” with the ball. You remember now? Experienced players would demonstrate how to receive a hit so that it melted into their hands and yo-yo effortlessly back up in a smooth, parabolic arc. Rick and company ended up being one of those melters. They had chemistry. They were creators of those parabolic arcs. But everyone, regardless of talent, had a great time getting away from the geekism of a computer conference. Rick has been quoted as saying the event was “the host’s most precious two hours: getting to play volleyball on conference time!” To see more v-ball pics, link to Rick Altman's photo essay.
The “hump” day as they say due to both Draw and Ventura users in attendance. A strange mix to say the least. On one hand you have Draw attendees interested in the likes of interactive fills and groovy contours. On the other hand you have Ventura attendees getting excited about generating cross references and indexes. Two products. Two kinds of attendees. None the less, both types of users are compassionate about their software. Mention “Adobe” to any one of these types of people and you'll be engulfed by a mighty Corel blast.
Day three started off with an interesting group of users at RWH Designs led by Robert
Harris. Robert called Rick before the conference to tell him about his happy experiences
designing sets, backdrops, game boards, and other big-ticket items for Universal Studios and Sea World. Upon hearing this, Rick
quickly pencilled in 
the three designers of the company into the keynote position on Wednesday.
“We've been designers at SeaWorld for almost ten years, and we are avid users of
Corel software. However, we began not knowing a bitmap from a vector”, they said.
Part of their presentation included multimedia clips of their work including guest
appearances by Woody Woodpecker and Porky the Pig. They titled their presentation
“Jumping Whales, Bullwinkle, and Lichtenstein Dots.” You figure out the rest.
RWH Design's Billboard: Created with Corel Photo-Paint.
Wednesday
was also the Expo Day where vendors representing Apple Computer, NEC, Hewlett Packard, and
yes, Anzai! Inc. were on hand at Conference Central to show their wares. Darn! Tom really
wanted to attend Bob van Duuren's
“Bob's Bodacious Draw Tips” and “Publishing to PDF” sessions that day.
Of course, he could have cornered Bob at the Help Center for a private one-on-one session
but that would be interpreted as presenter hogging by other attendees, right?!
Team van Duuren (left to right): Tom Anzai having a
coffee talk
with Karin and Bob van Duuren of the Netherlands
Towards the end of the day, the BIG prize (a new tabloid-generating, color QMS Magicolor 2+ thermal printer) was up for grabs as well as a host of other prizes. In fact, you can probably justify the conference fees by assuming that you won't be going home empty-handed. CorelWorld has a whole bunch of door prizes throughout each day that you can win. All it takes is to fill out a ticket at each session. Oh, yes, so who won the BIG prize? The big winner was Mary Goodnow. Another big winner of an Epson color printer was none other than Franca Voegelin who is a C-TECH volunteer for the Ventura newsgroups. Hmmmmm, didn't she win the big prize last year too?? Could it be twice-lucky or the way she secretly folds her tickets...
We were also entertained by a juggler who's mannerisms and voice reminded me of one of
the Disney rodents. Pick one of Disney characters and you could just imagine this guy
dressed up as such in a Disney parade. He squeaked, he chuckled, he had verbal diarrhea.
And he could juggle too. Now, if only I could have one-third of his mastery I'd be a
star...in Orlando...in a land full of make-believe. On second thought, maybe I'll stick to
my day job!
Wednesday's evening entertainment was a bus trip down to Downtown Disney to a place called Pleasure Island. Picture it. “Pleasure Island”. What do you think it's all about? Family entertainment? No. Shopping? Not quite. A bunch of bars strung together behind an entrance gate (costs $18 to get in)? You got it! It reminded me of the story Pinocchio when he ran away with a naughty boy named Lampwick to, I believe, Pleasure Island. Well, the island was a trick to eventually turn the kids into donkeys who then worked in slave camps. Anyway, I'm happy to say that none of us grew hooves and changed our name to Eyore.
I know, you're about to ask. Yes, it did rain today (again).
Day Four
Three down and two more days to go. The problem with socializing late at night is that it gets harder as the week continues. The solution? Don't stop, just keep going and hope that the flight home carries extra pillows! That and get Rick to rally the battle cry to start the Ventura session. (I heard the audience clapping and yelling from another corridor!) Day four and five are geared for the Ventura portion of the conference so the overall conference attendance diminishes somewhat. Some of the Draw users stay on to learn about the virtues of Ventura, but most either take on the Disney sights or take the megabytes of knowledge back home. The ones that do stay, however, are generally hard-core users of Ventura. Mention DOS-GEM to this group and you'll get the nod of acceptance. “Awesome, you rock dude.” This type of audience makes it harder to pull off an exceptional seminar, but at the same time you can get instant feedback if you “done good”. 'Course you also get instant feedback when you flub!
Ventura
gurus in the Help Center (left to right): Eric Weber, Jim Hart, John Faunce, Tom
Anzai
The keynote speaker in the morning was Allan Shearer, Product Development Manager of Ventura at Corel Corporation. Now Allan has a very articulate, laid back presentation style. He lectures as if you are talking to him one-on-one. He would be a good person to bring home to meet the family. Ack, that didn't come out right. What I'm trying to say is that he seems to be sincere and down to the level of the people. His presentation was one of my favorites in not only what he had to say but how he said it. He even showed an equivalent of a Canada's Funniest Video segment that he produced using a camcorder and Corel Corporation employees. It was a great way to see the faces in the Ventura department at Corel and how quickly emails about product enhancements are responded (right, Jim Hart of width table envy? ;)
Tom's sessions on Creating User Guides and Manuals, Newsletter Basics, and Generating Table of Contents/Indexes were a success. Only one attendee had the guts to say in the seminar evaluation that they thought they knew more about the topic than Tom Oh yeah?! Oh yeah?! Well...well...er...you may be right, but how 'bout them DOS-GEM days anyway...
Day four concluded with the infamous Ventura trivia contest (Draw's trivia contest was held on Monday) where Rick impersonates Richard Dawson of the Family Feud. With microphone in hand, Rick calmly leaned over on one elbow to each team's podium and elicited responses to Ventura and not-so-Ventura questions. Each team had a maximum of four members. Correct answers to questions that were queued on-screen by Wayne Kaplan generated points; wrong answers got the boo-boo-boink sound compliments of Big Daddy DJ Bill Blinn who played back the sound effects for the event.
Rain today? Yep.
Day Five
You know when you've had a great conference when you suddenly realize that there is only one more day to go and you wished for more. Kind of like the end of summer camp blues. Friday's keynote address was given by Michael O'Brien, Product Brand Manager for Ventura. He gets to take a hot iron stake out of the fire, hunt down Adobe or Quark users and brand their butts. He must be pretty busy--there's enough of them out there! Maybe it was the corporate atmosphere but I could have sworn that his speech was taken from an MBA textbook...
The day's seminars included ones like “Understanding Page Tags”, “Allan Shearer on Scripting” (this guy loves scripting so much he can't stay away from the Ventura newsgroups with his latest findings), and “Bob's Bodacious Ventura Tips” (he swears that Rick came up with the label “Bodacious”). Rad. Too So Cal! The day ended with Encore Performances including Tom's repeat of the “User Guides and Manuals” session.
The Last Dance
So was that it? Did we all do a
group hug and leave for home? Noooooo, we had another night to enjoy in Orlando! If you
ever get the chance, you gotta go eat at Charlie's Steakhouse in Kissimmee. Unless of course you're vegetarian.
You'd swear that the cows were being slaughtered behind the building. First, you enter
through the front doors and 
pass through the kitchen where they have
hunks of meat on display as if its the desert table. If that's not enough, the waiter
comes around with a table on wheels showing the different cuts of carcass (see picture on
the left). You can pick from your simple top sirloin to a massive, 52 ounce (!)
I-take-meat-seriously chunk. And guess what?! The individual dessert portions are big
enough to feed an entire table...of eight. Only in America.
Pass me the 52-ouncer there Debbie!
After we cut, hacked, and chewed our way through our dinner we waddled back to our rental car and headed off to Universal Studios CityWalk. Here's what the marketing types at Universal Studios say about their own entertainment complex:
“Serving as the gateway to UNIVERSAL STUDIOS ESCAPESM, Universal Studios CityWalkSM is an endless celebration of sight, sound and taste. This soul-stirring, 30-acre complex surrounds you with a dazzling array of restaurants, nightclubs, shopping, state-of-the-art cinemas and live entertainment venues inspired by popular culture's most legendary innovators and originators.”
In other words, another place to pay up to $6 cover-charges and drink your dinner.
There were bars with various themes from Pat O'Briens, Motown, Latin Quarter, and Bob
Marley. Which one did we go to? Yes, yes, yes, and yes! No 
time like the present to take it all in. Pat
O'Briens was the busiest with two piano singers playing folksy tunes, Motown was a
disappointment, the Latin Quarter had some amazing couples dancing the tango/salsa, and
Bob Marley was rained out. Yes, it rained so hard on Friday that they couldn't open the
Marley band shell for fear of the rain ruining the musical equipment. I can't stop
the rain! (quick, name that tune...). A little wet, but fun was had by all.
South Meets North: CorelWorld's Farthest Attendee, Bronwyn Tweedie from South Africa (there were three from South Africa!) brewing up a potion, and Tom Anzai from Canada feelin' the good vibrations.
So, this wraps
up another CorelWorld conference. What's next? Well, Tom will be presenting at Corel Mania
in Amsterdam, March 14-15 '00. Then, he hopes to be chosen again for CorelWorld '00 in San
Diego, September 10-15th. As for articles, come back towards the end of December when
we'll have a candid self-bio on Sharon George of Gorgeous George Graphics, an amazing artist who uses Corel Photo-Paint
to do some wickedly realistic designs.
Monkey See, Monkey Do: Tom and Fiaaz demonstrate
the evolution of man (you figure the order out...)
“A Day in the Life of CorelWorld '99, Part I”
Sue Chastain's “A Peek Inside CorelWorld '99”
Bobbe Singer's Photo CD Shoot of CorelWorld '99
Bill Blinn's Photos of CorelWorld '99
For related articles and step-by-step tutorials, please visit Articles & Tutorials.
| This story was really only supposed to be one, and only one part. So
what's up with the Part I and II? Well, when you run out of time and the editor is
breathing down you're neck, you fake it and tell the boss something like, “Really. By
having the story broken in two parts, your audience will be begging for more. They'll
visit your web site numerous times instead of only once. They'll get so excited that
they'll buy your product. Two stories, one event, more sales”. Gawd, I wished I had
it in me to have told him that. But he did buy into writing candid articles as opposed to
the corporate speak. Shhhhh! |
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