Back from Macworld 2008

January 19, 2008 | Filed under MacWorld Expo 2008

I just returned from Macworld 2008. It was a great convention for Mac fans, video editors and podcasters. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend any of the Final Cut seminars, although I heard they were excellent. I spent much of my time hanging with the podcast community. All that attended were welcoming and helpful with lots of information exchange.

Here are a few of my convention highlights:

Stood in line from 4:00 am to get into the Steve Jobs’ keynote. Totally worth it.
Randy Newman live performance
Shot two local television interviews. (see blurry iPhone photo above)
Shot a brief interview and promotion spot for the Girls Gone Geek show. (three of the ladies are indy film makers)
Devo live at the Microsoft Office launch party.

I also had the opportunity to meet and chat with several of my podcasting heroes:

Leo Laporte - always inspirational.
Scott Bourne - gave me several good tips on building out our new sound studios.
Craig Syverson - an excellent presenter, even with a raging cold.
Merlin Mann - chatted briefly on the show floor. What a great guy.
Alex Lindsay - checked out his Conduit nodal compositing software, an amazing plug in for Final Cut and Motion.
Tim Bourquin - discussed his upcoming New Media Expo in Las Vegas

The Market Symposium on Rich Media was a whirlwind event. Scott Bourne ran the proceedings with an iron fist. Eight hours, 16 presenters, no bathroom or lunch breaks! Most presenters squeezed their usual one-hour talks into this 30-minute format, so the information was fast and dense.

The convention center tech crew had occasional problems getting some presenters laptops working with their projection system. They were probably not used to seeing so many Macs. Often a presenter would be half way through their talk before their slides would pop on to the projection screen. They had the most problems with Liana Lehua’s MacBook.

For about 25-minutes of her presentation, three techs were unable to get her slides to display. They crawled around on the stage, walked back and forth in front of her, hovered behind her, had several discussions on stage, nudged past her to fiddle with her keyboard, and so on.

It was incredibly distracting, yet Liana continued on with her presentation, without the aid of her visuals, and completely unphased by all the commotion going on around her. What a pro!

A couple of minutes before she ended, presenter Richard Herrington from Rhed Pixel walked up on stage, nudged past the puzzled techs, and pressed one button on the laptop. Boom, the slides popped up on the screen to much laughter and applause.

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