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© 2000 by Rick Altman. All Rights Reserved.
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You think CorelWORLD lasts five days? Not for Rick Altman—it’s a two-week journey. Here is his exclusive behind-the-scenes journal...
For photos of many of the places and events discussed here, visit the CorelWORLD 2000 Photo Gallery.
There is nothing quite like the deep breath and exhale I can finally indulge in when I take my seat on the airplane. The 36 hours leading up to that is the most frenetic, chaotic, and stressful period of the entire eight months of preparation that leads up to a CorelWORLD event. Will I remember to copy important files to my notebook? Will I remember my notebook? Do I have enough pairs of socks? Did I pack my slippers? Should I iron my clothes now or when I get there? Will I remember when I get there? Where am I going again? When is the flight? Who’s taking me? What’s my name again?
But when the door to the plane closes, all of that vanishes and an almost magical calm takes me over. Anything forgotten will be FedEx’d; anything not ironed will stay wrinkled; I’ll buy more socks if I have to. Everyone is buzzing around me, but I’m going in slow motion. And as anathema as it sounds to those who know my pace during the conference itself, I relish in the sensation that I can move slowly because time is now on my side. I have three days all to myself—I treat such solitude like gold.
However, solitude is a relative term. Upon my arrival at the DoubleTree Hotel in San Diego, I might be alone, but I nonetheless have to share space. The hotel gives me a large suite for my stay, and it’s a good thing, because I am greeted by one dozen computers, five video projectors, 16 boxes, four crates, and one...and one...
The net.
Where’s the net?? We gotta find the net!!
No, not the network or the Internet—who cares about those trivialities?—the first crisis of the fortnight is the volleyball net that I personally shipped down to San Diego for our annual midweek sanity break. And it’s missing. Of course, why would hotel security think that a volleyball net belonged to a conference about computer graphics? They placed it in the employee recreation room...
For the next several hours, I remove from their respective boxes, 12 computers, five projectors, two printers, one network hub, and approximately one half mile of cable.
Then I go to bed.
I wake up, put my slippers on, and return to the living room area of my suite. There I will sit for the next six hours, configuring computers and calibrating projectors. It might surprise you to know that I take this task on personally (is it not too menial for the conference host?). In fact, it might be the most important thing I do during the entire event. In the quiet of that hotel suite, I create a master configuration for all of our computers. I determine everything: Where the software is installed, where data files go, what the Desktop looks like, how the Start Menu operates, dial-up information, defaults for browsers, icons for file types, mouse operations...everything down to the appearance of the context menu when you right-click on a .CDR file.
Once I have readied the “mother ship,” as I affectionately refer to it, I then connect it to the network hub, and one-by-one clone its image to the other 11 computers.
On this day, while the patrons are beginning to prepare for their trips, while they are beginning to get excited and charged up, I sit in a very large suite, all by myself, wearing my slippers, hunched over this morass of iron. I see nobody and nobody sees me. Oh, except for the housekeeping staff, who can now answer the question that you all have been asking for years: Boxers or briefs?
Today, I wake with a sense of urgency, panic almost. It is the last day I have to myself, as the core members of my team come on-site today, as well as a few early-bird patrons. The wonderful cocoon I have spun for myself is about to unravel into wild and unfiltered chaos. By about 5pm tonight, I will have lost complete control of my own conference; by then, it will have a life of its own.
I remember to eat breakfast this morning and I even dress. But I don’t shave, knowing that I will have to do so many days in a row beginning tomorrow. Again, one final breath of solace.
Friday is prize day, where I take inventory of what’s here and what’s not (while there is still time to make frantic overnight shipping requests). I head downstairs and into the deepest gallows of the hotel, where approximately 350 boxes are being stored for us. We knew full well that Corel would not have its purse strings open as wide as usual in the prize department, so we tried to compensate as best we could. And in the hardware department, we succeeded beyond all expectation...three scanners instead of one...two 21-inch monitors when we usually have none...four cameras...four color printers, including two $6,000 lasers...you get the idea.
Surveying the tonnage, I observe that we have fewer software prizes than usual, and I wonder if any of the veterans will notice. [At least one of them did, but Vicki Cunningham will remain nameless.] Most importantly, I note that all of the big-ticket items are here. Yay...
By noon, I am greeted by 34 new boxes—all of the conference guides and CDs. I pull one out of the box, leaf through it, and note that it is missing the first five pages. Now that’s comforting...
By 2pm, right on schedule, hell has officially broken loose. Sue Blumenberg...Jim Hart...Wayne Kaplan...my mother Beverly...my Aunt Marion...each one arrives on scene, each one about to ask me what needs to be done, each one expecting me to direct them.
But instead, something unexpected happens. Clearly the product of a core team that has been together for the better part of a decade, each one just starts doing things. Each one knows what to do and just does it. Nametags created...PCs packed up...signs made...inventories checked. I went into the bedroom of my suite and turned on the U.S. Open tennis, just in time to watch Venus Williams make her dramatic third-set comeback against Martina Hingis in the semifinals. It’s a miracle...no, not Venus winning (well, that might have been one too, down 3-5 in the third set), but my being able to watch it.
3:30pm—“Pre Con.”This is the official pre-conference meeting with the hotel. It’s always the same, as the four of us, wearing various combinations of shorts, sandals, jeans, and t-shirts, are greeted around a conference table by 20 hotel supervisors in tuxedos and business suits. The Executive Chef, the head of Reservations, Housekeeping, Banquet, Sales, Security, you name it, the head of that department is here. And each one of them says the exact same thing: “My extension is xxx, and if you need anything at all, please call me. Anything.” Okay, I always think to myself, the next time I need some extra shampoo delivered to my room, I’m calling the chef...
Welcome to the CorelWORLD War Day. We call it that because we move downstairs to what we call our War Room. It is Ballroom VI, destined to become the Corel Campus, but today it is the room in which we do battle with all of the equipment and supplies that will become the skeleton of our conference.
Jim starts assembling hardware for the seminar rooms and the Help Center, Sue and Chris Hanrihan begin scheduling the prize train, the sisters (Mom and Aunt Marion) begin setting up Registration, and I...um, well...I once again have nothing to do. It’s taken over a decade, but I finally have worked myself into a position of superfluousness.
What a luxury to be able to leave the War Room on War Day and be able to complete preparations on the (gulp) eight seminars I have to give. I am ultra-motivated to not be up each night working on the next day’s seminars—the evening activities really sound good this year...
And thank goodness for mobile phones that actually work. Jim is from Texas, Bob is from Holland, and I am from California, but we all regularly call each other from within the same hotel on War Day. We also have a pair of two-way radios, but they don’t seem to work nearly as well as a PCS phone call that goes from Ballroom VI to Amsterdam and then back to Room 1109.
6pm. Everything changes. We meet the public for the first time, at our traditional gathering in the lounge for those who come in on Saturday. It’s very low-key, beers and pretzels, handshakes and hugs, greetings and lots of catching up. And to everyone there, it marks the beginning of CorelWORLD. In a strange but very tangible way, it feels to me like the conference is over. I have spent the last four days (okay, the last four months) pushing the big boulder up the hill. And now, at 6pm on Saturday, the boulder has reached the top of the hill and will now roll down the other side all by itself. One way or the other.
That is how Saturday evening always feels to me.
7:30pm. Gradually the team heads back upstairs to my suite for our annual staff meeting. When in San Diego, we trade out with Gary Allen, a professional chef and earnest CorelDRAW user. He attends the conference with fees waived, and in return he prepares a banquet for the staff on Saturday night and the following Friday evening. Talk about your win-win situation...
My suite looks a bit different than just a day previous, when it was done up in early 21st century nerd. Now, Gary has it looking and smelling like a palace. His dinner is the highlight of the evening, until Tom Anzai discovers the bathroom connected to my bedroom. It is a paragon of grotesque overindulgence, with...well...I’ll let Tom illustrate it for you.
We are ready to move from the War Room, and it is then that we really feel like a conference. Registration moves into position in the main ballroom, the lattice dividers go up around the Help Center, the furniture is brought in, and when The Mom gives the thumbs up, at 11:55am, we open the doors.
Our optional Sunday crash courses have been phenomenally popular over the past five years, as we offer introductory seminars on DRAW, PAINT, and VENTURA. I am mindful that the veterans of the group don’t find much value in these courses, but we keep getting so many new users and first-timers to the conference, what’s a host to do? This year, we have over 120 making their first trip to CorelWORLD!
And most of them are with us in Conference Central at 5pm for our first happy hour. This is one of my favorite times of the conference, where the energy level is sky-high, and everyone is settling in. As is my custom, for reasons that find no basis in logic, I do not wear a badge at CorelWORLD, and on Sunday afternoon, quite a few of the patrons do not know who I am yet. It affords me my one opportunity to be anonymous and I relish in it. There I am, chilling at the bar, with a Corona, chatting up two first-timers from Maryland, when Lee Musick comes up from behind and engulfs me in a bear hug. “Hey, Altman—we’re going to the Gas Lamp...c’mon!”
“Oh, that’s Rick,” one of my drink mates whispers to another before turning to me. “You did seem to know your way around here...” Damn, one more cover blown.
Once more, the buzz. It’s as intoxicating as the other kind of buzz. And while there were 150 or so milling about Sunday evening, now there are 250. Half of them don’t know what to expect, the other half do, but all of them are...buzzing.
As am I. Those who kid me about being a hummingbird do so because of my Monday morning buzz. Everyone is here because of the seed that we planted almost a year ago. The book by their side, the gleam in their eye, even the coffee cup and croissant before them. What a rush!
Just about everyone in house has been to a conference before, but not one that strikes the creative nerve the way that CorelWORLD does. And I don’t take credit for that: We could do this at a Ramada Inn in the middle of the Nebraska plains and we would still strike that nerve. We could feed everyone box lunches with PB&Js and still enjoy that buzz. The fact that we do it right, the fact that we make it fun, the fact that we are primarily responsible for creating this unique environment, that truly is a sensation beyond compare.
And at the same time, a part of me still has that sense that the conference is over, not just beginning. Today is its official beginning, yet it is my sixth day on site. By now, the boulder is moving so fast down the hill, we’re just along for the ride.
That illusion passes quickly. Everyone is “checking in” with me, as they have been accustomed to doing for years. Jim tracks me down to inform me of a flaky PC in the Help Center, Sue wants my input on what hardware we award at lunch, Mom has about a dozen items for me concerning registration, and Karin van Duuren (whom we flew in from Amsterdam with hubby Bob to help run the show) needs my approval before ordering an extra gallon of coffee (that’s about $75 in hotel currency). But now it’s 8:30 and we’re ready to rock and roll. Good, there are the butterflies—I’m ready.
Good morning. [Pause for five seconds] Two women walk into a bar...
I did this once before, back in 1995. Who ever heard of beginning a professional conference with a bar joke? In fact, the ploy is one of our numerous attempts at audience participation...
...They approach the bartender, when one of them says to him, “This place better be good—we ducked out on a workshop for installing Windows 2000 just to be here.”
“That’s right,” says the other, “so what can you offer that’s better?”
The bartender places a cocktail napkin in front of each woman, leans over and says, “_______
Well, that’s as far as we got, but we know that there is a good joke in there somewhere...
The veterans groan, the first-timers giggle, but one way or the other the ice breaks just a bit. We will take their suggested punch lines for the next three days, and award a prize to the best one. [You get a crack at this, too—see our Quiz of the Month...]
One hour later, I enter the Corel Campus for my first presentation, and you can’t possibly imagine the calm that comes over me. They say that public speakers should be concerned when they aren’t nervous before going on, but in this setting, my emotions are very different. You see, when I’m giving a seminar, it’s like a personal oasis, where I am isolated and protected from the arcanaries of the conference. No one can “check in” with me—they all must figure out for themselves what needs to be done (and if War Day is any indication, I am the last person who needs to be consulted).
You would think that giving a seminar would be nerve-wracking; instead, it is incredibly relaxing. Moreover, it is my unique opportunity to connect with the patrons. They know that for the next hour, they have my undivided attention and focus. My friends and my family often ask me with scrutiny why I pile on the seminars instead of just concentrating on running the conference itself. Now you know how I answer them.
On the other hand, I am usually the least-informed person at my own conference, as it is most unusual that I can get any quality time in the seminars. I’m lucky to be able to do poke my head in. Knock-Out? I barely know it. The great team presentation given by Sharon George and Ken Jurina? Missed it. Tony Severenuk’s sneak preview of DRAW 10? Nope. I do make Paul Huntington’s presentation of his winning entry to our Design-a-Brochure contest (oh...right, I led that presentation). I joke with my team that just once, I’d like someone else to do CorelWORLD. Who am I kidding—I’d go stir-crazy.
Our new-and-improved trivia contest is a big hit in its Monday afternoon debut. I stole from everyone to design this game: It looks like Jeopardy, with categories and point values; it features a Phone-a-Friend square, where each team can pick any staff member to help with that question; and the Survivor square enables each team to vote one of its opponents off of the game for that question.
Monday night’s dinner cruise on the San Diego Bay is one of the finest evening outings in CorelWORLD history. The weather is spectacular, and as we pass the Hotel del Coronado, we are treated to a lavish fireworks display. At least a dozen patrons thank me in jest for arranging the fireworks. Of course, I just nod and tell them that the pleasure is all mine...
9:00am—halfway through the morning keynote. I am reminded why I continue to ponder eliminating half of the keynote addresses we offer. One of the most respected authorities in digital design and photography reads, word for word, a 60-minute speech. Nothing like starting the day off with a bang...
With only one seminar to give, most of my day is consumed by my frantic machinations over the beach party we are throwing that evening. We guaranteed the caterer 50, but only eight people had signed up before we came on site, and we are on the hook for $30/person. So we notify the caterer that our numbers might be down a bit. Wouldn’t you know it, one hour later, over 60 people approach the reg desk wanting to sign up. The caterers call to inform us that they can reduce the number to 35, while we ask them if they can increase the number to 60. We squeeze 58 out of them, and those who are on the waiting list plead with us to let them come just to be there—they promise they won’t eat!
Okay, so we allow 60-some-odd patrons to come to our beach party...never mind that the capacity of the bus we are chartering is only 48. Such serendipity that over a dozen want to go early with me to play volleyball! We caravan in five cars (while rumor has it I was supposed to be giving an encore seminar) and have the infamous Net up in minutes.
The dinner cruise the night before? It held its title of finest evening event for less than 24 hours. Ask anyone who was there—the beach party is just magical. Great food...live music...perfect weather...incredible sunset...and a bonfire after sunset. See our Photo Gallery for some great images of it.
An incredible end to a memorable CorelWORLD day.
We have always called it Hump Day, but this year we take a bit of extra ribbing, given our theme of “Go Deeper.” This is the day when everyone is in house: Those who sign up for the graphics portion, Mon-Wed, those who are doing the publishing segment, Wed-Fri, and the approximately 155 who signed on for the entire week.
No dummies, we, I save our strongest keynote address for this day:
Albert Einstein.
Back for his second reincarnation, the good Doctor hits home with his themes on creativity, including one of his most famous sayings:
Creativity is seeing what everyone sees
and thinking what no one has ever thought.
For the second year in a row, Albert gets the ravest of all of our rave reviews. He’s a keeper, we know...
Wednesday is traditionally the most challenging day for me, as I begin the battle for control over my own energy. To the inevitable question asked of me that week—“how do you do it??”—the answer is that I borrow. I borrow deeply into my reserves of adrenalin, and as I get older, paying back the loan becomes more difficult. Invariably, fatigue begins to set in and I must make good use of my down time and be confident that the switch that turns the adrenalin on is in working order.
Wednesday morning, the switch is not working well, and I’m like a car in need of a tune-up, sputtering down the road in fits and spurts. Good thing Albert is hitting on all cylinders, because I’m in the back of the room intent on not moving a muscle and not making a single decision.
But then comes the magic cure-all: I head into The Studio for my presentation on creating Adobe Acrobat files, and I encounter a room so full, two hotel employees are frantically setting up extra chairs in the back. Standing room only! If that doesn’t get the adrenalin flowing, I’m definitely in the wrong business.
This crowd is so hungry for information on PDF files, that I hardly need to do more than avoid falling on my face to satisfy them. In fact, though, my presentation is very ambitious, finishing off with a live example of how CorelDRAW can import a PDF file and convert it to its component parts for editing. That remains, in my view, one of DRAW’s most unique and unrivaled strengths.
Our heavyweight industry expert does much better today than in the Tuesday keynote, spending over two hours discussing digital photography. And after lunch, I head into the presentation that I have been most looking forward to: managing typefaces. For this session, I intentionally destroy my notebook computer’s configuration, copying hundreds of typefaces into the FONTS folder, trying to recreate the dismal situation that plagues so many users. It is fun, and a bit scary, restoring the system to good health while almost 100 people watch over my shoulder.
My favorite part of the presentation is showing the ad I found in Publish magazine. Priceless...
4:30pm—Time for the CorelWORLD Expo, where Conference Central loses all of its theater seats and gives way to a dozen vendors showing off their wares. The Expo has a storied past and is a bit maligned by some of our patrons. In short, they want more vendors—they want a trade show, like Seybold—while I feel we are lucky to get any. Not that the CorelDRAW demographic isn’t a good one—it’s a fantastic one—but most companies want to see groups that number in the thousands, not the hundreds, before they commit human resources to an event.
I have no doubt that I will continue with the Expo and that I will continue to disappoint the contingent of patrons who expect to walk up and down rows upon rows of trade show booths.
This is not to say that anybody leaves. The food is free, the two-woman band from the beach the night before is playing, and we’re giving away hardware every half hour. The house stays full right up until 6pm, when Teresa Schnurr of Ontario Canada wins a Matrox Millennium video card. Oh, did we mention that the 21-inch Mitsubishi Diamond Plus monitor is included...?
Teresa leads a brigade of Canadians who absolutely rob the Prize Train. Both of the Lexmark Z52 printers go to Albertans (Karen Humeniuk of Calgary and Pam Strausz of Boyle), Paul Huntington from Pickering ON nabs the Epson digital camera, and Cassandra Strumecki of Edmonton AB celebrates her 50th birthday at the conference by winning one of the QMS color laser printers.
Oh, and the prize train? Well, you must visit the Photo Gallery to see it in action, as conductor Chris Hanrihan really outdid herself this year.
As soon as the Expo finishes, I collapse, issuing apologies to those who are expecting me to join them on the private CorelWORLD trolley car to Old Town for dinner. It’s dinner in the hotel restaurant for me and early to bed. One of these years, I’m going to let someone else host CorelWORLD so I can stay out late and party. I know...another empty threat...
Good thing I stayed in last night, because Thursday promises to be my busiest day:
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8:30 |
Introduce keynote speaker Vincent Flanders |
In the past, Thursday has proved to be a bit of a letdown, because we lose a large percentage of the full house we enjoy on Wednesday. In 1999, we went from 335 to 100, reminding me of the “giant sucking sound” that Ross Perot warned us about. But this year, our numbers are much more evenly distributed, and our Thursday implosion is only from 285 down to about 195. I can handle that...
This implosion, in and of itself, is an interesting story. The second half of the conference has belonged to VENTURA Publisher since 1998, the year we expanded CorelWORLD to a weeklong event. We undertook this expansion because with the VENTURA numbers dwindling, we could no longer justify holding a dedicated event for VENTURA as we had done since 1989. By merging it into CorelWORLD, we could continue to offer it.
But as the event grew, and our numbers for the CorelDRAW component grew, it once again became difficult to justify such a gap, not to mention withstand the giant sucking sound of all of the Mon-Wed people departing, leaving only the full week and VENTURA crowd.
But this year, we had twice the number of people register for the entire week than ever before, and I know exactly why that is. As much as I’d like to believe it was due to a sudden insurgence by VENTURA, it is something else.
It’s the Web.
We added several dedicated sessions on the Web to Wed-Fri, turning the VENTURA segment into a more generalized publishing component. Many dozens of patrons who would have otherwise registered just for the first part of the week decided to extend their stay, attracted by dedicated sessions for Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage.
So what is the interesting part? When they got wind of it, our friends at Corel were terribly displeased with this turn of events. “They are our direct competition,” said one of Corel’s directors. “We cannot support an event that caters to our competitors.”
At first, my pleas fell on deaf ears. Until I was magenta in the face, I tried to explain that we were not targeting Macromedia or Microsoft customers. This event would be, as it always has been, for Corel users and the software they use. Corel users create their graphics in DRAW and PAINT, and then they turn to Dreamweaver and FrontPage to create their Web sites. Things would be different if Corel had its own Web page program.
Ultimately, this crisis was settled by all of you who came to the conference. The first 20 who registered back in April all signed on for the entire week. By mid-May, we had sold more Full Passports than all of last year. It was clear that the extra Web content had struck respondent chords with the users, and that was all we needed to know. And not long after that, Corel found itself with slightly larger concerns than our little conference, so we just let the whole thing blow over.
Okay, so back to Thursday. I cruise through the morning sessions, happy to be presenting on VENTURA again. (I only get one opportunity a year, and in many ways I prefer my presentations on it to the ones I do for DRAW.) I bounce out of the presentation room and into the lunch tent with nary a care in the world. After all, I’ve made it past Hump Day, everyone’s having a good time, nobody’s died...things are good.
You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, right? Fifteen minutes—that’s all it was. Just 15 minutes that my notebook computer was left unlocked in a completely empty ballroom. I race back in upon remembering, but it is too late! Gone! Both the machine and the black leather case. I have little doubt that it is the work of a back-of-the-house hotel employee. No chance it is a patron—we are all out at lunch, and the idiot doesn’t even think of taking the AC power adapter. No CorelWORLD patron would be that mean and that stupid.
We’ve lost computers before at CorelWORLD, but never mine. I feel naked and violated. I make no announcements, but a few people learn about it. How could they not when I make the following entrance into Conference Central at about 1:30...
Sh*t, f***, my g*ddammed notebook is gone...
sunofab****, it’s f***ing gone...sh**!
But all other outbursts have to wait, because in 20 minutes I have to give a very intricate and advanced talk about the use of cascading styles in HTML, and I have to do it without any notes at all and on a machine totally foreign to me.
I completely bag the meeting with the trivia contestants, imposing on two veterans of the game to take over for me. I sit at the head table of the ballroom, wildly scribbling notes on what is just one step up from a cocktail napkin. And bless her heart, Sue Blumenberg tries to run interference for me as people approach.
“Rick, do we need to use our prize tickets for the big giveaway next door in five minutes...?”
I owe someone an apology for not even looking up, as little 4' 8" Sue physically intervenes and leads the person away. Others can tell that something was up—but my focus was complete at this point: Pulling off this talk is like my way of striking back at the thief. It would be like a victory. Therefore, I decide not to make a plea for sympathy—no announcements about what happened, save for a dismissing remark about not having my notes, so please bear with me.
I do survive the talk on cascading styles, leading me right to the next crisis: the VENTURA trivia contest, the entirety of which resides on my notebook. We have a backup—it’s on that nifty 18GB removable PCMCIA hard drive that I purchased just a week before the conference. Oh...right...it’s in the case...the one that is probably in Tijuana by now.
My knights in shining armor are Wayne Kaplan, Allan Shearer, Lee Musick, Jill Barringer, and probably a few others, who completely recreate the trivia contest in about one hour. Lee even goes ahead with his initial (and surreptitous) plans to stage a staff vs. staff trivia contest afterward. It is just what the doctor ordered—let someone else run things for a while.
Whew, what a day...
The emotions always run deep on this day. Am I sad that it’s almost over, or relieved? Can I not wait to get back home, or do I want to soak in the magical CorelWORLD atmosphere as long as I can? Communicating emotions like these is always tricky for us men, and in my opening remarks this morning, I’m not certain if I effectively convey my feelings:
“I look forward to not having to shave tomorrow morning.”
How did I do??
Past that, Friday’s keynote offers little humor. Traditionally reserved for the product development manager for VENTURA, Corel currently has nobody in that post, has deigned to comment on the future of the product, and sends nobody to the conference assigned to speak on its behalf.
So we do. Allan Shearer, Jim Hart, Bob van Duuren and I lead an impassioned discussion about the future of this troubled product, and our sincere intention to stay with it for the foreseeable future, even if Corel drops it altogether. To be a VENTURA user is to know the deepest sense of frustration over a product that might be the most powerful and effective ever designed for its purpose, and over a product about which few seem to care.
What will happen to VENTURA? Nobody knows, including Jim who says “VENTURA dies when I die.” But this much is clear: if faith alone can save a product, no software on the planet deserves a rekindling the way that VENTURA does.
Wouldn’t you know it, my Cascading Styles presentation gets voted for an encore. We have been offering our Encore Performances since 1995, based on the most gratifying complaint we receive at CorelWORLD:
“I couldn’t decide what to go to, they all sounded so good.”
During the lunch hour, patrons cast their votes for sessions they hated to miss, and we arrange for the speakers to give the presentation again. Many speakers take it as a point of pride, which is a bit ironic. After all, the people who vote for a session aren’t saying that they really liked it; they’re saying that they didn’t see it. The seminar could be awful, and still get voted for an encore! In truth, however, the patrons’ grapevine is very strong, and word travels fast about a session that was top-drawer...or one that was dog meat.
So with my Cascading Style seminar being voted in for an encore, it simply means that there were many people who didn’t see it the first time around. Good, because overnight I downloaded my notes and files from my FTP site back home. This time I get to do it right. This time, I get to show the totally cool demo of how a page can completely change its appearance, based on the .CSS file attached to it. I feel like telling everyone to come watch it again.
At 3:25, five minutes before the encore, there are exactly five patrons in the room. Five minutes later, there are eight. Nine, counting my room monitor, Cheryl, but she has to be there. Where is everybody? Where are all the people who voted for this session to be repeated??
I walk across the hall and there’s my answer. Instead of offering a standard encore in the other track, my seminar management team decided to bring back the tag-team duo of Bob and Allan from last year. The entire conference, less eight people, is in there! Oh, the ignominy—who’s running this show, anyway? To whom do I complain??
4:30pm—time for our last giveaway. Due to a Friday double-booking with the hotel—the details of which would put to sleep a can of Jolt Cola—we relocate the Help Center to...ready for this?...the bar. That’s right, the hotel lounge and lobby bar (appropriately named The Windows Lounge) features Pentium IIIs with your beer and wine on this day.
I, for one, just love it. I can’t think of a better way to wind down the conference than in the lounge. And as we are about to award the final prize of the day, I stand up on a chair to make my final remarks to the group. I am holding the winning ticket in my hand, so I am assured of having everyone’s undivided attention, as I deliver the final word on CorelWORLD 2000:
“Who wants to go to the beach with me tomorrow?”
Laugh if you will, but I learned long ago that what I do immediately after the conference is just as important as my time spent before the conference.
I remember the mistake I made in 1989 at our very first one. After two days of having the attention of 300 people focused on me, I went straight home. Now I love my wife very much, but the vacuous feeling of going from 300 people around me to just one was too much to bear. I literally suffered withdrawal symptoms.
I learned that I need to come down gradually from an event like this, and the way to do that is to continue to surround myself with people. Kathy Strauss accosts me and slaps my wrist for not having told her about this before she booked her Saturday morning flight. [Note to self: Make Saturday outing an official conference event in 2001...]
One last prize to award, a final set of hugs and handshakes, a few final beers (you see, how convenient to do it all in one place), and we are ready for...TEARDOWN.
Teardown is nothing but a race against time. We are all dragging and we are all struggling to keep our wits about us, while we have to be methodical and reasoned about what gets boxed up and how, and what gets sent where and how.
Well, the rest of them have their wits about them; I’m completely useless. And the rest of the team knows not to expect much out of me by now. Pretty convenient...I can’t help you pack up all of my own property because I just don’t have the faculties for it right now.
Actually I do contribute something: I bring down four large bags of laundry from my suite to provide padding for breakable items. Oh, and wait, I make another contribution: Chef Gary. He arrives at about 5pm with coolers full of deli spreads and beverages. You have no idea how smart arranging that trade with Gary makes me look. But that doesn’t mask the fact that to any casual observer, I play the part of the biggest screw off around: while the team is busy packing up, I’m in the lobby bar giving hugs to everyone, men and women alike. [Shades of 1996 and Baltimore, but that’s an inside joke and we won’t go there...]
No alarm clock, no razor blade, and no continental breakfast. Shorts, sandals, bacon, and eggs—what a great combo. Then it’s off to the airport to pick up the family. We have already alerted Erica’s school that she is going to have a cold on Monday and Tuesday, so please excuse her.
Thanks to my last minute lobbying in the lobby bar, we are joined at the beach by a group of nine. With family and Mom, that makes 14. Perfect number for wind-down.
The weather is spectacular and our two girls, Erica and Jamie, are on their best behavior. The highlight of the day, however, is the reception that Mission Beach enjoys from one Denise Then of Calgary Alberta. They don’t have anything quite like a Southern California beach up there above the 50th parallel, and on this day, Denise is about as close to heaven as a person can get. One doesn’t usually get to witness such unfiltered joy during the week of a business conference.
Many thanks also go out to Foster Coburn, Aaron Currier, Brenda Davies, Michelle Johnson, Wayne Kaplan, Carol Lovelady, Robert Louze, and Nancy Moldenhauer for helping bring me down gradually.
I wake up early and head downstairs to make sure that our boxes are properly cared for and ready to be shipped. (It’s about time I take some responsibility for them...). And I have to tell you, it is more than a little depressing to walk through a hotel, once vibrant with your friends and colleagues, and see nobody you know. Sure, the bellman still greets you, and one of the women at the front desk asks you how your stay was (past tense), but that almost makes it worse...
Indeed, the melancholy of the after-conference is almost palpable. After all, what can possibly compare to the incredible zeal, spirit, and energy that the patrons exhibit during our magical week together?
On the other hand, beyond compare is the indulgence of getting to spend a second straight day horizontal on the beach, with my family, where the most important decision to make promises to be when to have lunch and whether to eat it or drink it...
We pick a perfect day to go to Sea World, with few lines, no waits, and plenty of good seats right in the area where the whales and dolphins splash the hardest. It will come as a surprise to few that Erica and I relish the notion of sitting there.
We get to ride the Shipwreck Rapids three times in a row, as there is no line behind us. Tres cool...
Our departure day is well timed; I can no longer move.
Which is harder, preparing for CorelWORLD or having the kids for three
days afterward? And Becky had them for 10 days before heading down, so
who can blame her for passing them on to me now? We decide to split up
on the flight home—Becky with a kid on one side of the plane, me
with another elsewhere. Divide and conquer...works every time.
I have been home for almost two weeks, but I haven’t yet returned to Earth. Hosting CorelWORLD is such an amazing experience, and I treat it with the reverence of a religious ritual. And I feel very fortunate that I can indulge in that a bit. I accomplish very little upon my return home. Make a few phone calls...take a nap...answer e-mail...watch television...change a Web page...take another nap.
But now reality calls, and my focus is snapped back to the rituals of the dance...the 12-month dance that is the CorelWORLD season. This is the part of the process that gets everyone’s attention; I can never escape it. For example, he didn’t say “Hello, nice to see you again,” or anything like that when we first encountered each other on Registration Day on Sunday. No, instead, Gary Bonder shook my hand and said “Myrtle Beach. That’s where we should go next year—Myrtle Beach!”
Indeed, the search for a home in 2001 has already begun, and that is without question the most reliable way to bring me down from the CorelWORLD high. It’s too early for any announcements yet, but you can make some inference from the fact that while you are reading this, I am in Boston visiting hotels. You can also make an inference from the fact that I adore San Diego and take any excuse to visit it. Other cities are in the mix, also.
The other open question is what to call it. CorelWORLD 2001 looks and sounds dumb. Maybe CorelWORLD ’01, or maybe we go the Super Bowl route and call it CorelWORLD XII. And patrons wondered out loud more than a few times if we would be able to call it CorelWORLD or have to go with Something-ElseWORLD.
We certainly hope for the former, but you can be assured that if the software exists, in any form, we’ll be there. And we hope you will, too...
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May 2007: As simple as possible, but not simpler... · April 2007: Killer Keystrokes · March 2007: Resolution Confusion · January 2007: Fearless Forecasts for 2007 · November 2006: Epiphanies at PowerPoint Live 2006 · August 2006: Escaping Death by PowerPoint · July 2006: Notes from the Floor of InfoComm · June 2006: Beyond PowerPoint--Making Movies for Business and Pleasure, Part II · May 2006: Beyond PowerPoint--From Photos to DVDs · April 2006: It’s Your Music!--Overcoming the oppressive restrictions of iTunes · March 2006: CorelDraw X3—A few must-haves and a few missed opportunities, all in all, a credible upgrade · February 2006: Making Windows Inhabitable · January 2006: Fearless Forecasts for 2006 · September 2005: Just What is a Background Anyway? · August 2005: Meet David Dobson, Corel's New CEO · July 2005: Community, Blind Dates. and Albert Einstein: An Interview with the PowerPoint Live Conference Host · June 2005: CorelWorld 2005: Image Editors, Executive Appearances, and Krispy Kremes · May 2005: As Adobe's Shadow Grows, Is Corel Better off or Worse? · March 2005: Delivering Your Presentation: How Close to the Source Can You Get? · February 2005: Digital Photography: The Killer App of this Generation Part II · January 2005: Digital Photography: The Killer App of this Generation · November 2004: A Killer Deal for Corel Or Another Distraction? · September 2004: The Scourge that is Kazaa and AOL Instant Messenger · August 2004: The Golden Triangle: Presenter, Audience, and Slides · July 2004: A Blast from the Past: How Fast is Fast Enough? · June 2004: Guilty Pleasures · May 2004: A Personal Wish List for PowerPoint 12 · April 2004: Eyedropping: Version 12 makes a good tool even better... · March 2004: Deadly Sins Of Modern PowerPoint Usage · February 2004: Is the even-numbered curse finally over? · January 2004: Another take on Achieving Absence of Ugliness · November 2003: What can we do it again??--Debut of PowerPoint Live Leaves Unquenchable Thirst with the Host · September 2003: Corel Corp. Has a New Custodian · July 2003: Candor and Contrition at CorelWORLD · June 2003: What a Long, Great Trip It’s Been! · May 2003: The Boat that Corel is Missing · April 2003: No Fooling...Is Corel Breaking Up? · March 2003: The Annual Design-a-Brochure Contest · February 2003: Symbolism is Everything · January 2003: Mania, Our Semi-Annual Pilgrimage to Holland · October 2002: On Creativity, Problem-Solving, and Paper Bags · July 2002: CorelDRAW 11: Surprise, Surprise... · May 2002: The Sound of Silence: What does it mean when a company plays its cards so close to its chest? · April 2002: The Art and Science of Presentation Graphics--Creating for the Screen Has its own Challenges · March 2002: CorelDRAW 11: What kind of personality and attitude should a software program have today? · February 2002: Oy, my aching fingers... · December 2001: Digital Photography · November 2001: Can we say goodbye to the Rolls Royce Mentality? · October 2001: An Unforgettable Week: The drama that unfolded around CorelWORLD · August-September 2001: The Art of Paragraphics: New-age ingredients for success with Corel VENTURA · July 2001: Your Very Own Interface: How to make Corel applications read your mind · June 2001: Fighting the Font Wars: How to stay sane with your sans · May 2001--Turning the Key at Nicholas-Applegate · April 2001--A Modest Proposal for Reviving VENTURA Publisher
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Mastering CorelDRAW 9
