Review of the 4th Annual Auckland Laptop Crop

4th Annual New Zealand Laptop Crop – May 29 -30 2010

Our fourth laptop crop was perhaps one of our most exciting, with members flying in and driving  from all over the country and 3 guests from overseas.
Lynnie, and Bendipez ( Brenda) travelled from California and CathieMarie came all the way from the UK for our 2 day event.
We had members fly in from Christchurch and Wellington and JanP drove up the 6 hours from HawkesBay to join in the fun.
Saturday started very early for those of us who made up the welcoming committee at Auckland Airport to meet our overseas guests.  From there we took a short tour of Auckland before dropping them off at their respective accommodations.

By 2pm the NZ members from Christchurch, Wellington, and Hawkes Bay had arrived at Fernz Conference Centre and we took off by car for our Photowalk .

Despite a chilly brisk wind, and several cars getting lost on the way we eventually made our way to North Head to explore the tunnels and gun emplacements and admire the views of the city and harbour.

After catching the ferry across the harbour to the city we braved the cold, drizzly weather for some photos of downtown before dining at Limon Restaurant on Princes Wharf .
Even the deteriorating weather couldnt dampen the merriment that comes from meeting up with friends that you feel as if youve known a life time – even if you actually have only met in real life for the first time that day!.

The crop on Sunday ran from 9am – 5pm and was casual and fun with tutorials and demonstrations of Photoshop CS5 spaced throughout the day . There were goodie bags and crop buttons  for everyone and we had fun swapping ATC cards.

Erica and Lauren provided freebies and there was much sharing of chocolate before and after the great buffet lunch in the restaurant.

Sharyn ( thecharmed01) was our queen of the crop, completing 12 fantastic layouts during the day.
All good things of course must come to an end but we all agreed that we definitely dont want to wait another year for our next event, so planning is already underway for a 3 day retreat later in the year.

Check out some of the layouts created at the crop and layouts completed about the crop here .
Below are a few samples