Class on Demand Report Card

News, views, and information from COD | April 2009

Paul Holtz Fires Back

To me, NAB seemed a lot less crowded this year than previous years. Of course the real barometer of any show in Las Vegas is best measured by the cabbies. The Mario Andretti-trained taxi drivers zip through the back streets of Las Vegas avoiding the Strip like the plague. They venture miles out of the way to never let their Goodyears be tarnished by the crass main drag of the town. Naturally, the extra distance also means inflated fairs so there’s an ulterior motive. One cabbie informed me that “show attendance was down 21 and a half percent.” Officially, the NAB announced an attendance of around 80,000 (about 20% down on last year’s attendance) although this number includes exhibitors, wives, children, uncles, press, pets and just about anyone else who at some point registered and may or may not have actually come to the convention center.

The show floor certainly seemed as packed with exhibitors this year as last. Over 1400 exhibitors included old faces like AVID who returned after a one year hiatus sporting a new logo and branding campaign (gone are the old brands like Softimage and Pinnacle). Apple was still absent which certainly kept the noise in the south hall to a more tolerable level and Grass Valley once more was Grass Valley and not a hodge podge of brands with non-French sounding names. GVG, as the industry still calls them, certainly won the “I’ve spent the most amount of money on a café area” prize. I expect their lattes were served on real estate whose value tops that of the Starbucks on 5th Avenue at 34th Street (bottom of the Empire State Building) in Manhattan.

All in all there seemed little new news. Sure there were some amazing display technologies and people sporting even cooler looking 3D glasses to watch animated characters try to grab you from the screen. And yes there were the pre-requisite number of scantily clad women wandering the halls soliciting support for one booth or another but the show seemed to lack the excitement of years gone by. There was no stand-out cool new technology or product, no major announcement that caught everyone by surprise. It seems, perhaps, that NAB is no longer the event in the year that galvanizes engineering departments to deliver new products or marketing departments to work 20-hour days to deliver brochures for a product that is still “cooking” on its way to Nevada. I got the distinct sense that NAB was just another activity in the year and an almost reserved sense of ‘business as usual’ permeated the halls.

For Class on Demand it was our first show and business as usual could not be further from the truth. We really enjoyed meeting new and old customers and receiving compliments from so many folks. We heard that the people at Adobe were ecstatic when they heard their booth was to be located close to Class on Demand and we understand they have requested the same location next year to take advantage of our crowds. We aim to please.

Training by Dan Gookin Windows Vista Made Easy “Windows Vista Made Easy” contains everything you need to know to get up to speed quickly and easily with latest operating system from Microsoft.

How to Shoot & Produce your Child's Sporting Event After viewing this training, you’ll be able to start making home videos that everyone will want to watch! These lessons will help you impress your friends and neighbors by gaining professional tips and tricks.