NAB 2009 – Taking Requests
After being invited to speak at Career Day for the 2007 National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, I have made it an annual pilgrimage so that I can find out what the big guys are thinking long before the new technologies and operating methods come down the pipe. Hey, it’s free to register for the exhibition floor. I was fortunate enough in my first few years to have a delegate pass so that I was able to sit in on various panels and seminars on topics ranging from After Effects, the new 3D cinema movement, and podcasting to how to shoot professional video on a thousand dollar home camcorder and monetizing a blog.
There are some very cool cats attending and speaking at this year’s conference. Stu Maschwitz – creator of the Orphanage and author of the excellent (and must read book) the DV Rebel’s Toolkit, will be speaking on a panel hosted by Red Cameras about making a million dollar film on a thousand dollar budget. Also, Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Outliers will be there to expound on how to find topics for new books and ideally shed some insight on how he figured It all out.
More so than usual, this is a turning point year; the NAB is really working hard to figure out the irrevocable sea change going on and what broadband and ubiquitous internet-based streaming sites will mean to television. This year President Barack Obama signed legislation to delay the transition from analog to digital TV by four months. I remember two years ago when NAB was pushing hard to ensure that Americans understood how to apply for Government subsidized $40 vouchers towards their digital receivers. When I went to Radio Shack to submit my own I discovered that I didn’t need it after all – my Sony Bravia HDTV already had a digital tuner and the converter was for legacy TVs. This is something that NAB failed to get across. And I was there, hearing it from the horse’s mouth!
At any rate, this post is an invitation to readers of this blog to comment with ideas and questions they would like me to take to NAB 2009. If you can’t be there, might as well have me do the work for you, right? So send me your questions, concerns, gripes and curiosities, and I will do my best to get you answers at this year’s conference.
Thanks for reading and see you on the other side.
Vegas – ho!
