A Tribute to 25 Years of LACPUG

[The following tribute to the Los Angeles Creative Pro User Group (LACPUG née LAFCPUG) was written by Luis Flores and posted to Facebook on June 26, 2025. A powerful and poetic tribute to the magic that was LACPUG, for 25 years the defining community for video editors around the world. A labor of love and a work of art created by Mike Horton.]

I REALLY don’t know who needs to hear this whether it’s Michael… or Michael… or Michael… or the other Michael… or Steve… or Steven… or Stephen… or even that Steve… or maybe it’s Stephan… or Larry… or someone standing just behind them, carrying the same torch.

You didn’t just help me.
You helped everyone. AND I MEAN EVERYONE

You stepped in when our timelines were breaking. When Final Cut Pro froze mid-export, or our renders kept failing, or projects went dark with those dreaded “Media Offline” screens—we panicked. But you showed up.

You helped us understand the difference between FireWire 400 and FireWire 800—not just as cables, but as lifelines. You taught us why speed mattered. Why drive architecture mattered. Why RAID arrays weren’t just fancy—they were our damn survival kits.

You told us to stop saving media to the desktop. You told us what a scratch disk was. You even made us understand why defragmenting was a real thing and not just some Windows nonsense.

And at the start of those meetups once a month when the nerves were high — we’d play Stump the Gurus.

It wasn’t a game.
It was sacred.
It was where we brought our pain, our confusion, our corrupted projects, and you gave us answers.

We didn’t know what the hell a codec really was, not like you did. But you did.

You taught us the difference between a JPEG and a PNG, a WAV and an AIFF, and most of all, you gave us the gift that was ProRes—422, HQ, and yes… that glorious 4444.

It wasn’t mythical. It was real. And it worked. It made things smooth, stable, fast.

It changed how we edited. It saved our deadlines. It saved our clients.

THE VEGAS EVENTS were the things life-long memories were made of. The prizes forget it. I lived that life. I WAS THERE. IT was IT. I recall running to the APPLE set up to try out the NEW FCP updates and new tools and there was STEVE MARTIN a guy I saw often at LAFCPUG. He was working for APPLE??? He let us hear this amazing sound effect for a BATMAN thing. IT NEVER worked as advertised but it was AMAZING to see these plugins and new tools by Apple at NAB

And the plug-ins given away? We remember.

• Sapphire Effects
• Boris FX
• Automatic Duck
• Nattress Film Effects
• Final Touch (Final Touch HD later became COLOR. i mean I won that damn software, it helped me become a colorist for years.)
• Color grading workflows that finally brought the film-look home
• And all the prizes
• All the raffles

All the knowledge that came with just the cost of a ticket—or a donation, if that’s all you had that month.

Because let’s be honest: That wasn’t cinema. That was life-changing.

And I don’t know who needs to hear this, but someone out there—maybe you—knows the right person to help turn this into something real. A short film. A mini-doc. A tribute. A love letter. Maybe you know an editor who can help. Maybe someone out there has old footage, or photos, or just the stories.

Because what happened in those meetups — whether it was in Hollywood, or the other locations we bounced between, or even here today in this beautiful auditorium — what happened there changed lives.

It was real.
It was one of our only lifelines.
It built a community.
And it mattered.

It changed the way we lived. From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU for saving me.