Houston Adobe User Group w/Drew Shefman

Hi, I’m standing here with Audrey Sheffman from the Houston Adobe Users Group and he’s going to tell us a little bit about what they do down in Texas with Adobe. So can you tell us a little bit about your group? Sure. It’s the Houston Adobe Users Group. We have the whole range of Adobe products, but which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and Flex. Since I run the group and I’m mostly a Flash Flex developer, I target most of the conversations. Unless someone comes up and says I really want a Photoshop presentation or something, then I’ll find this group. But for the most part it’s a Flash Flex group with the name So you meet monthly in Houston? Monthly, it usually works out to about eight times a year. We try for every month, but it doesn’t always happen, especially now with the holidays coming up. Okay, and as far as like, what’s your typical attendance look like? Do you guys usually get devs or designers? I mean, if you’re doing a Flex group, would you probably be more biased towards devs? More biased towards devs. The group varies a lot between like three people who come or like 80 people who come, depending on the speaker or whatever. The designer sessions usually get a little bit more people. They’re just harder to find speakers for since I’m in the Flex dev community. But yeah, it just ranges. Everyone shows up and we try to tailor it to beginner level content. Okay, and just something about kind of a technical detail of the group is how do you manage your meetings? I saw the website, but I didn’t quite catch whether it was Meetup or a custom site? Well, it’s Adobe’s solution to managing all of its groups. Oh, okay. So Adobe provides a groups.adobe.com site for us. So if you want to form an Adobe user group, you just go there and say, “I’m whatever. I’m the group and here’s the meeting times.” And they can push anybody who’s interested to that site. And so you can search for other user groups in the area. Is that only Adobe oriented groups? It’s mostly Adobe. Okay. What made you want to found a group? Or did you found a group or have you taken it over? I’ve taken it over for somebody else. But I work alone. I’m an independent contractor. Okay. And I mean, coming to conferences like this and reaching out to my community, it’s the way I interact with people. Yeah. Otherwise, just working on an island, you don’t get to talk to anybody. Right. Yeah. That’s what drove me to create my first user group as well. Great. So when you’re having a meeting, I mean, you described that you’ve gone from having a three-person meeting to an 80-person meeting. What kept you going through those down times of having the low attendance and then, you know, because that’s something that can really… It is. It’s very draining. It’s almost defeatism. Yes. I don’t know. It’s just the, you know, for the couple people who come out and they’re interested, I’m excited to give them something. Right. You know, that’s kind of what it is. I enjoy the opportunity to meet with people. I think there’s a lot of value in FaceTime. Right. I mean, in our industry, especially today, everyone’s on social networks or talking over the computer. That’s not a connection. Right. That’s your… That’s an interface. Right. It’s a it’s… And I think the human connection, just meeting somebody and whatever it is that you’re talking about, having FaceTime with people is just invaluable. Right. And, you know, and then, you know, we talked about the three-person meeting, but then you have the other end of the spectrum. When you’re in overflow capacity, you know, you have 80 people. I mean, that’s got to be the other end of the spectrum. The 80 people is very predictable. Right. It’s if, you know, Adobe is touring and they send, you know, an individualist to come talk to us or something. We’re like, you know, “Hey, Adobe is here. There’s a big name here.” And, you know, all of… You’ve never had surprise topics like, “I did not know this was going to be that popular.” You know, a surprise topic would be like 15 to 20 people. Okay. Okay. Great. And, you know, what advice would you give to somebody that’s in Houston? Like, I’m familiar with the Chicago area, but what is… What’s unique about user groups in Houston? Is there that… I don’t know. Hard to draw people? Yeah, I don’t know if I can give you advice because I don’t know if I’m succeeding because, you know, I’m happy when I have three people. Well, that’s… It’s… You got three people. Right. I have three people. But I found that with Houston, if the meeting is not in the building that you work in or exactly on your route home, they’re not going to come. Right. You know, if it’s like five minutes out of their way, Houstonians don’t get there for the most part. I mean, that’s why we have our steady three people. Also, you have a lot of committed members that will come back. Right. Right. Unless it’s an amazing topic or something that someone’s just dying to know or someone just comes into the area like, “I need a new job,” or, “I need to hone my skills in this area.” But, you know, if we move our location, we’re like, “Oh, we’re going to have this downtown at this building.” People who work in that building will show up. Okay. Okay. Now, if we go to the most convenient option for us as the managers, which has the free parking, the free entrance, the free Wi-Fi, all that stuff, then we get our three people. If we go downtown where you have to pay for parking and sign into security, you can get more attendance, but it’s a higher barrier to entry that someone who’s not downtown or not actually in that building won’t come. And has, you know, looking at some things like cost, like if you were to go downtown, does Adobe offer any kind of support or anything like that for helping to people? They do at certain, like, membership levels. Okay. Which we’re nowhere near. So if we had, like, consistently had, like, over 100 members coming, we would get some level of support. If we consistently had, like, 400 members coming, we’d get another level of support. They offer incentives. They’ll give us software to raffle away and other swag, which is awesome. And, you know, the day that we say, “Today’s the raffle for the $1,000 software,” people show up. People show up. But we can only do that once a year. So, you know, we try to build in incentives. Like, the more times you come, the more raffle tickets you can get. Oh, okay. Things like that. It’s all just a big bribe. Well, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Well, anyway, Drew, it was really great talking to you here. It’s the Houston Adobe Users Group. Yes. And they meet semi-monthly? Every month. With some breaks. Okay, but you can find out. We’ll be linking to their user group, or Drew’s user group. In the post. Thank you very much. Sure. Thank you.