We held the Shanghai Training Event yesterday. It was a really intense session. The room was full - at least 30 trainers and professionals were there - and we stared at 10am and ended at 6pm. Nikki led the training, and Alex provided translation and hands-on support.
Although, as unofficial TA, I am not sure how annoying I was.. probably slightly. Every once in a while I'd lean over to Nikki and whisper.. "psst.. look, that guy is struggling, he has the no icon texture map on his tank!" .. "Nikki.. psst.. that girl is having a hard time transferring to the medium res model... should 'we' help her?"
Bless my patient colleague, she didn't tell me to hush up!!
It's interesting to see and observe people learning something when you don't speak the language. I spent all day gauging people's reactions to the material and the software. The people being trained yesterday really embraced the material, and many who hadn't really seen much of XSI other than a demo were enjoying the experience of diving into the workflow. It was awesome watching a room of people GATOR at the same time!
One of the trainees new to XSI said "XSI should be the future of 3D in China - no other package out there can compare to it in terms of workflow and performance." Two artists from a post poduction studio outside of Shanghai took a 3 hour train ride - EACH WAY - to get to the event. They have been waiting for XSI training for a long time, as they want to switch their pipeline over to XSI as soon as they can.
I can't say enough what a great job Adam Sale did on this material. Using the soldier model from August Zhang and the material built by our content team for the Six Education tour, this is such a comprehensive training package - i was learning more about Crosswalk & Maya today! Its going to be instrumental in helping schools and trainers around the world teach the next generation of 3D artists. Speaking of, very cool to see how many young women are studying 3D in both Shanghai & Seoul. We need to keep trying to balance out that sky-high level of testosterone out there in the industry!
Nikki said something so brilliant today.. "Women working in 3D today are the warriors for the next generation." Love it.
I stayed in the hotel today while Teresa, Alex and Souma-san went to visit clients. Nikki and I had a top secret assignment to finish, something long overdue for our WW education & training community. I'll write more about it in the near future, once the kinks have been worked out and it's approved by our management team. (Hi there, Management Team! :)
Photos from the event:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jgoldfin2007/SoftimageAsiaTour2007ShanghaiChina
I also added more photos to this folder:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jgoldfin2007/SoftimageAsiaTour2007Outtakes
Tomorrow is a travel day, with potentially a client meeting in the AM. Saturday is a day off somewhere fabulous, and Sunday we head to Mumbai, India for the last leg of this Amazing Training Race.
It's going to be sad leaving Shanghai, this has been an incredible week.
Hope you are doing well, wherever you are!
jen
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