Wed 23 May 2007
Free Bike Loans
Posted at 09:47 +1000
I hope a plan to loan residents bikes for free in south western Sydney works out.
Topics: community
Posted at 09:47 +1000
I hope a plan to loan residents bikes for free in south western Sydney works out.
Topics: community
Posted at 11:03 +1000 (edited 18:08)
Along with a few other Open Source projects (GNOME, the GIMP, Verse and Inkscape ), Blender has a booth in the exhibitors hall at SIGGRAPH 2006 in Boston right now.
For those who don't know, Blender is an Open Source 3D modelling and rendering suite. Like so many programs trying to do complicated things, it has a fairly steep learning curve (along with requiring a certain amount of artistic ability to create stuff), but once you master the interface, it is a program of enormous power and usefulness. I tend to splash around in the shallow end of knowledge a bit, enough to appreciate the software behind the scenes and the results that people produce, without contributing anything much back to the project.
Something that the Blender group -- or, rather, one particular person -- are doing very well at SIGGRAPH producing and distributing daily videos of what is happening. Sitting in my office at home, half a planet away, I can see what is going on each day. I can pick of some of the enthusiasm and see how others are using the software. I can get ideas about what works and what doesn't when publicising projects like this.
These are well produced videos as well (each one is about ten minutes long). The sound and vision are both clear. When Bart is talking to people, they all speak clearly and interestingly about what they are doing (the trials of putting up the huge Project Orange banner on day three is a highlight here). In short, this is immediate publicity done well. Even is you aren't into graphical modelling and rendering, but just interested in how an Open Source project can sell itself whilst still being informative to those who are already "sold", it's worth a look.
The links below are to the relevant stories on BlenderNation, which contain download links to the daily videos.
Topics: software/graphics, community/journalism