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Last year when I was in Seoul in got the chance to chat with Jason Calacanis, whom I told him about The Actionscript Conference. When I told him that it is still small, he told me “give it a few years”. His words bring me far and I am determined to turn TAC into one of the biggest Flash and Flex conference in South East Asia.

This year, TAC will be held on the 14th and 15th September, in the 550 seater of NTUC auditorium at One Marina Boulevard. For many attendees, it simply means crossing the road of Shenton way from their office to the venue. 2 Full days means we are invite more speakers, more topics and give you the updates and knowledge of Flex, Flash and Flash Player, and AIR that you are craving for.

I am proud to announced that ticketing is now opened. So register now!

The Actionscript Conference (TAC), the first conference I ever organized, happens at The National Library yesterday on the 19th October 2008. The term “Making history” is a bit overrated, but I guess me , the organizers, the speakers, the sponsors and the attendees will remember this day as we all finally have a conference that is much needed in this region! I will like to especially thanks Lionel Low , Kenneth Teo, Alex Goh, Alvin Zhang, Stefano Virgilli, Arul Prasad , Arul Kumaran and Bok Thye Yeow for making all these possible! And of course, the speakers and sponsors, for giving us so much support!

It has definitely been a busy 4 months but we are finally able to pull this off. For those who are unable to get a ticket to the event, I posted video (thanks to AV8 and FusionGarage for renting us the cameras!) to share the final moments of TAC

I also went around to interview the attendees, here’s one of them

Going forward, I believe now its time to plan for TAC 2009!

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I am very glad to have visited Adobe Seoul today and meet up with Sang-Houn Ok of Adobe, Jungwong Lee , Community Champions, SundayToz and Bryan Choi of WithFlex

I managed to introduce them to Singapore Flex Usergroup as well as The Actionscript Conference. Jungwong and Bryan shown me the amazing works of theirs. Apparantly, there are 3 Flex institution that teaches solely on Flex in Seoul, and that the Seoul Usergroup organize a bi-monthly Flex seminar / workshop that attracts up to 300 people to attend! Since they are 3 Flex institution, finding a venue is very simple.

I managed to a find tips from Bryan on managing his usergroup, which actually has a monthly growth of 500 new users, and to date, a whooping 15 thousand members since its inaugural in October 2004. This is a very astonishing number, considering the developers demography in Seoul is very segregated. That being said, it means that most of the people attending the usergroups are actually pure Flex developers.

One of the tips that I find very useful is that Byran listed down the demographics of the UG members by Gender, and Professionals on the group page. This is useful as it will allow the managers, as well as the members to see how they are fit into the group. For example, many business-owner may find a Usergroup is “just for developers”. Seeing the demographic graphs mind change their mind. And of course, the graphs are done in Flex.

I will like to thanks Adobe Seoul and the usergroup leaders for the warm welcome and I definitely hope I can grow the Singapore Flex Usergroup to their standard!

Image via Wikipedia

Creativecrew, Singapore Photoshop and AfterEffects usergroup just have its September usergroup meeting 2 days ago and I am honored to be helping them to record the sessions.

Below is the first presentation by Stefano, the creativecrew usergroup manager, demonstrating how to use brushes techniques to create clouds and birds in your photo. I am always astonish at how these professionals can create such realistic effects. Watch the 20mins video below to see it yourself.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

There is also demos on showing how to create “tourist removal” for photos as well as expressions for After Effects. I will put up the videos after I convert them to FLV during the weekend.

I realize what is taught at creative crew are very useful for photographers (especially amateurs like me), as well as video enthusiast (which is again, me). I hope they can continue to help support from the local creative communtity and grow strong!

About Creative Crew:
Creative Crew is the official Adobe User Group for Photoshop and After Effects. Based in Singapore, Creative Crew has the aim to share and spread techniques and tutorials for both Print and Video.

The User Group meets every second Tuesday of the month in a Live Meeting. Most of the time the venue is Adobe office in Suntec City Tower 3, Level 6, Temasek Boulevard, Singapore.

Creative Crew also organizes OnLine Meeting using the powerful tool Acrobat Connect. OnLine Meeting are normally held the week before the Live Meeting.

The Manager and Administrator of the User Group is Stefano Virgilli, Adobe Video Specialist, Adobe Certified Instructor and Expert in 8 versions of 4 Adobe softwares.

They also have a Facebook page

Last week, the Singapore Flex Usergroup manage to have its biggest Usergroup meeting to date at Yahoo! Singapore Office.

Special Thanks for Henry, Yahoo! Engineer, and Kenneth Teo for helping me with the logistic as well as Yahoo! Singapore for providing us with the venue. Its a great night of pizza (woo!) , knowledge exchange and networking, with as many as 8 speakers going up to share their knowledge and information.

Next month, we are hoping to cover some fundamental topics of Flex 3, Actionscript 3.0 to help new members catch up with the technology. It is very exciting to see how the usergroup has evolve. If you have any topics in mind, feel free to jump to our forum and let us know.