We aren’t a huge team and are located across 2 continents, 3 countries and 6 cities.  It isn’t surprising since we are a company about collaborating across different locations, we like to walk our talk but we’re all social beings and getting together once in a while is something even the most introverted of us like from time to time.  So this recent weekend was the first time the Cloudpic crew was all in the same location 🙂

After spending a whole day in meetings, getting on to the same page, catching up on development, schedules, to dos and what’s next.  We had dinner at Top of Vancouver, a revolving restaurant that gives you a really good view of the city.  It was the right spot to get everyone comfortable and get to know each other better.  I have to say, when it comes to colleagues, I’m one really blessed chickie 🙂  I’ve always had a good group of people to work with.  There’s no exception at Cloudpic, made up of Americans and Canadians of different ethnic groups, they are a bunch of very intelligent and collaborative people.  The pressure is on for sure.  Working for people who are highly intelligent challenges what I know and what I can.  It’s going to be a busy couple of months till the end of this year 🙂

Then it was 5 days of conferences and more meetings over lunch and dinner too.  SIGGRAPH was held at the Vancouver Convention Centre, which is such an idyllic spot for a MICE facility.  It overlooks the water and mountains so the view is quite relaxing.  In between, conferences and meetings, I’d take a step out feel the sun on my skin and take a breath of fresh air 🙂

My first SIGGRAPH was kinda what I thought it would be, there were moments when it got a little technical for me and there were the moments when I was in the room with the true genius talents that make the fantastical vision of great directors seemingly real.  I kept my fangirl moments in check and played it cool.  What I learnt though is this, technology may be kick ass and animation can be really good with stunning visual effects but if you don’t have a story, you won’t probably won’t be much more than a fad.  Even the geeks know this.  So how come studio heads don’t?  That’s one for a whole other post.

Anyway, it was a great first SIGGRAPH.  One with more opportunities to follow up on.  I like what Thomas Edison said about opportunities:-

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Like I said it’s going to be a busy couple of months.