Hurricane Matthew Update - Vectric User Group 2016

[dhellew2]

In spite of the hurricane the UGM was, as usual, well presented with useful and sometimes exciting information.

Hats off to Vectric staff for their long distance travels, braving the storm, and continuing the meeting with a small group.

Special KUDOS to Michael Tyler for braving the storm, bringing nearly half of the show and tell displays, and the Vectric supplies in spite of the fact that his own home had to be evacuated.

Michael and perhaps others including Jim Coats homes sustained damage and power outages.

Thanks to everyone for making yet another enjoyable and productive UGM!
Dale

[JamesB]

Thanks again to all who came to the Vectric User Group in Orlando. We're looking into options to broadcast some of the presentations for those who were not able to come and will make an announcement on that soon. We're also working on a more detailed report and a lot more photos for both the US and UK meetings.

Given the weather, the Orlando User Group was still a good meeting - albeit with a lot less attendees than we planned for (about 25% of the original number booked). In the end the weather was a lot better than anticipated but right up until about 4am on Friday morning they were still predicting the worst for that area and we understand why so many people had their flights cancelled and why others made the decision to stay home. We were really expecting to have no power come the morning and be gathered in small groups around lap-tops!

Thankfully the hotel was very flexible and helpful with adjusting the room layout and catering to accommodate the lower numbers and everyone who could make it seemed to get a lot out of the meeting and provided very positive feedback. All in all I think it was as good as we could hope for in the circumstances.

The unfortunate circumstances with the weather means the number of people who can claim to have attended every single Vectric User Group is now very small indeed!

As Dale said, huge thanks to Michael Tyler for braving the storm (when his own house was in its path) to bring all his amazing samples and also all the User Group packs that we had pre-shipped to him - we are very grateful. Although thanks to Dale too for bringing his nice giveaways for everyone. Michael did a good job of posting photos (apart from the ones of me!) here is a few more then we'll have some better ones with the report.

Cheers,
James

[Ferny]

Thanks to Vectric for putting on an awesome 2 days of training!
I have already been using some of the techniques you covered. Shortcuts and tiling in particular. It's always nice to have questions answered immediately by the experts who created the software.
I got just as much out of talking to the other attendees as well about tips, tricks, setups, and finishing techniques.
I thought I was a pretty decent user until I saw some of the display units. "mind blown" You can sure tell the super users are using Aspire daily.

Beki really did a great job on 3D modeling and I now understand the basics. She is a Jedi Master!

Edward teased us with new Aspire 9.0 features, and I had a good talk in with him about his Raspberry Pi projects. I'm new to the forum and I'd like to see some of his old CNC resurrections. Many of us have DIY machines and his insight would be welcomed.

Dan gave a couple talks and I know several people who were newbies appreciated his new user approach.

Best of luck in your future career James!

Thanks again for training during a hurricane.

Bill Fernholz (Iowa State hat guy)
aka Ferny