AV News 174 - November 2008
By 8 o'clock I could relax at bit, the kit was working, the computer recognised the
speakers' memory sticks and the hall was filling, a very respectable 24 people in
the end, rightly turning out on a summer's evening to hear our speakers.
As for the talk, the time went far too quickly. Though it was their first time
doing a dual presentation, they managed to slot their inputs together well,
with appropriate amount
of ‘interaction’. They
covered so much, from
basic principles of PTE
and Audacity, through
Photoshop techniques
for sizing and lining up
consecutive images and
even producing an AV
from
scratch.
They
slotted in some of their
own AVs and gave a
gala premiere of the new
‘AV
News
website’
promotional sequence (finished at 1:00 am that morning). And of course the
audience, many of whom had not seen the presenters’ sequences before, were
in stitches over Messiah and enchanted and amazed at The Colour Thief.
Then lots of chat after the presentations, everybody had thoroughly
enjoyed the evening and everyone had learned something. I could at last
breathe a sigh of relief. And I had learned a lesson, if you want good
attendances to meetings in mid-summer, get quality speakers. Perhaps the
success of the evening can be summed up by an e-mail I received from one
of the group members the next day.
“Howard, That was a fantastic meeting. Thank you very much. What a
splendid all day workshop we could have with such calibre workers!! I was
most interested in their method of resizing and joining relevant images… …
I really think Stafford AV Club is becoming most exciting, & the turnout for a
summer evening was good too. “
Like most groups we try to get a mix of activities for our monthly,
Wednesday evening, meetings. We have demonstrations, ‘work-in-progress’
sessions, low key competitions and external speakers. In November Malcolm
Imhoff is coming to talk and Richard Brown in January. If you live within
travelling distance of Stafford, please come and visit us some time, or even
join our group, you would be very welcome.
We meet at Derrington village hall (ST18 9LR) on the third Wednesday of
every month, starting at 8:00pm. See www.staffs-av.org.uk
For more information please contact our Secretary, Chris Lovatt
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