I hope everyone had a great holiday season and a happy new year! We’re gearing up for 2008 and what better way to do so than to announce our meeting schedule for the upcoming year.

As you probably know I (Justin) will be in and out of town on business throughout the upcoming months, but we WILL have meetings as scheduled and we WILL give away another copy of the Adobe Creative Suite! Below is the schedule for the upcoming months, however we need speakers and/or topics for each of these, so if you are interested please let me know!

• Thursday, January 31st - 6-7PM in Freed Curd Auditorium
• Thursday, February 28th - 6-7PM in Freed Curd Auditorium
• Thursday, March 27th - 6-7PM in Freed Curd Auditorium
• Thursday, April 24th - 6-7PM in Freed Curd Auditorium
• May Meeting TBD

Remember you MUST attend at least one meeting in order to be eligible for the CS3 raffle, and if you attend more than once you increase your odds of winning! Have a safe and happy new year everyone and I hope to see you all at a meeting very soon!

Those of you who attended the last meeting already know this, but for those who weren’t there last time, we are officially delaying the Creative Awards until AFTER the New Year. However, we will still be having a raffle for a FREE copy of the Adobe Creative Suite 3 during our November meeting. To be eligible for the drawing you MUST attend at least one meeting. Adobe has also informed us that we will no longer have to wait on shipping for CS3, as they are making it available for download to our raffle winner!

We are still working on details for a possible trip to Photoshop World in April. If you are interested please contact Justin or Brent for more information. The conference costs $125 for students and there are scholarships available. Once registration opens officially we will post more details about how you can get involved!

That is the news for now, we hope to see EVERYONE at an upcoming meeting!

We have finally got the meeting schedule for PSD finalized. We are going to meet on the last Thursday of each month from 6PM-7PM in the Freed Curd Auditorium on the campus of Murray State University. This venue provides us with a very large screen for demonstrations and/or videos and the auditorium also gives us a great area for group discussion. Here are the dates of the next few meetings so that you can mark your calendars:

• August 29th, 2007
• September 25th, 2007
• October 25th, 2007
• November 27th, 2007 - Winners Announced for Creative Awards

We are still working on subject matter and speakers for these dates and will let you know as soon as we have something set in stone. This year promises to be much better than last and we hope to see all of you at an upcoming meeting.

We are pleased to announce that the Photoshop Designers User Group will be the primary sponsor for this year’s Creative Awards. This year we are also pleased to announce that, thanks to our friends at Adobe, the Best in Show winner of this competition will receive a full copy of the Adobe Creative Suite 3. This means you will have your choice between Design Standard, Design Premium, Web Standard, Web Premium, and the Production Premium Suites. We are currently working with other sponsors for individual category prizes and will announce those as information becomes available.

The Deadline for entries will be Friday, November 16th and the winners will be announced at our meeting on Tuesday, November 27th. We will be posting the official rules and entry information here on the website and they will also be available at the next meeting as well. One thing that has NOT changed is that you MUST attend at least ONE PSD MEETING in order to be eligible for the contest.

We are currently in the process of developing a fall schedule for the PSD meetings and as soon as everything is finalized, we will be posting those events here on the site. There are several exciting things coming up for the group this year and with the support of our sponsors we expect to double our enrollement and meeting attendance by offering some really great membership incentives.

In addition to the new site and new meeting formats, we are also going to offer recordings of our meetings both here on the site and on DVD (for $5) for those who are interested. This means that you never again have to miss a meeting of any kind! That being said, we are going to need members to help with production and web work this year as well. If you are interested please contact Justin for more information.

That’s the news for now, stay tuned for more updates to the site and more information about the exciting year ahead of us!