Boston is a center of art and design with lots of local photographers, graphic designers, and other digital artists. As such, the city is the perfect backdrop for Photoshop World, a three-day, fun- and information-filled extravaganza on all things Photoshop. This year’s Photoshop World was a major success, with people coming from all over to participate. Filling the second and third floors of the Hynes Convention Center, Photoshop World held over 100 classes, a gear and trade expo, pre-conference classes with some of the world’s best photographers, and so much more.
The main difference we found between Photoshop World and other conferences was the people. Photoshop World is run by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). As mentioned in our interview with NAPP president Scott Kelby, he chooses all the speakers and presenters personally, which means that not only is every instructor an expert but every instructor truly wants to help you learn and see you knowledge grow. The floor crews, stage managers, information booth workers, and so on are all NAPP employees. By keeping everything in-house, the organization ensures that attendees will have a positive experience with every single person you run into who is helping run the event. For those of you who go to lots of conventions, you know that the people running the show can make all the difference, and NAPP’s people simply excel at customer service. Macworld seems to have come to much the same conclusion as we did.
We had a chance to ask Scott Kelby his thoughts on this year’s Photoshop World Boston and he had this to say, “I’m the wrong guy to ask, because I’m thrilled! (laughing) What I’m most concerned with is that the attendees are happy. This is the only chance our staff gets to meet people face to face. All year long you’re doing this and that but it just goes out the door, this is the chance where you actually get to meet the people whom you’re doing it all for and it really energizes our whole company. Julie Stephenson is really the person who makes this work. If you give her a list of 6,000 things to do the week before Photoshop World, she’ll get them all done.”
We’ve focused a lot on the people that help run Photoshop World because that’s the thing that really makes Photoshop World unique (and because long, over-technical Photoshop talk can be boring). What you really need to know is that the classes were excellent, the expo was excellent, and the extracurricular activities were excellent—but it’s the people that really make this a must see. If you get a chance to go to the next Photoshop World, you can expect it to be well worth your time.
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