NAB Cancellation Thread: From Adobe, AJA, and Avid to Zaxcom. And of course NAB themselves!

[Eric Santiago]

Yea I canceled on going this year.
We had family vaca that bit the dust as well.
This is the new norm for most of us.

Hoping all colleagues, friends and families are safe.

[Bill Davis]

Risk is just too high.
I’m not going either – and I’m going to predict that they’ll have to cancel NAB this year.

Covid-19’s general lack of lethality for the healthy among us isn’t the issue for me. It’s that spreading the virus increases the chances that it reaches someone in the high-risk categories, and I’m unwilling to act as an unknowing vector.

I suspect all that remains to be seen is what the trade show landscape looks like AFTER this year.

These giant gatherings have been wheezing along for a few years now. I’m uncertain whether this year will be an anomaly, or a sharp nail in the coffin of these shows as an overall business driver.

AJA and ADOBE have announced they are both doing what would have been their NAB product rollouts via webcasts. Grant at BlackMagic already was doing them as part of their overall marketing efforts. And of course, Apple, had already left trade shows for a virtual “event marketing” strategy a decade ago.

Things are changing fast.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Mark Raudonis]

Much like the Tsunami in Japan was the death of HDCAMsr and tape based delivery, this event may be a watershed moment
for the grim future of tradeshows.

In related news, the interest in “remote editing” is skyrocketing! And… by “remote editing”, I’m not talking about an individual with a pile of local drives at home, I mean replicating access to the complete “Shared storage, large work group” environment via home internet connection.

There are solutions out there, but they’re complicated and expensive. But, what’s your health worth?

I predict that this moment is the turning point to the “remote editing” capability that we’ve all been yakking about for years. The tools are available now. We just need to formalize and legitimize the workflow. It’s as much a “human” problem as a technical one.

Meanwhile, I’ve cancelled a vacation trip, my NAB plans are in doubt, and we’re all in on disaster planning.

[Tim Wilson]

[Mark Raudonis] “Much like the Tsunami in Japan was the death of HDCAMsr and tape based delivery, this event may be a watershed moment for the grim future of tradeshows.”

Funny, we were talking about HDCAM SR just the other day. There were people willing to pay 10x for tape after the tsunami, but there were other people who said, you know what, enough already. We’ve been meaning to get around to this for years, so let’s just spend that money to finish the transition to tapeless.

[Mark Raudonis] “I predict that this moment is the turning point to the “remote editing” capability that we’ve all been yakking about for years. The tools are available now. We just need to formalize and legitimize the workflow. It’s as much a “human” problem as a technical one.”

Yeah, whether the event is cancelled or not (I’ll go on the record and predict NOT) that this is going to be the before and after of the show at the current scale.

I also think you’re right that what’s been stopping us from flipping the switch on TRUE remote editing on the scale of film productions and the vastly-larger scale of production at Bunim/Murray is more conceptual than technological. It has seemed easier to fly people around than actually figure out the name brands to plug into making remote collaboration work, but how this year unfolds might be the push that people have needed to say, enough already. We’ve been ABLE to make the switch, so let’s just do it.

[Bill Davis] “AJA and ADOBE have announced they are both doing what would have been their NAB product rollouts via webcasts. “

Slight modification Bill — so far, I think that the only thing Adobe has announced is that May’s Adobe Summit is cancelling its Las Vegas event in favor of online-only. News about that here.

Over the past few weeks, we have been closely monitoring and evaluating the situation around COVID-19 to ensure we are taking the necessary measures to protect the health and wellbeing of Adobe Summit attendees. As a result, we have made the difficult but important decision to make Summit/Imagine 2020 an online event this year and cancel the live event in Las Vegas.

While we are disappointed that we will not be together in-person with our community this year, we are excited to host Adobe Summit as an online experience.

This is an event that they were hosting, with 16,000 folks on hand last year. I can easily imagine a world where they cancel a major event that they’re responsible for, but still attend a show in the same city a few weeks earlier as one exhibitor.

I definitely agree with one of your points about Blackmagic, though: Grant’s pre-NAB videos the past few years have brought some of the show’s most compelling news. I’d love to see more of this from a lot more folks, whether or not they go to the show.

Still, though, I can also imagine AJA as the first of many. GDC is off, Google Next is off, no Facebook F8, Facebook and Twitter are among the major pullouts from the tech section at SxSW, and so on. My wife is in medical education, and she showed me an article listing 32 medical conferences canceled so far this year. I guarantee that that number is nowhere near the end of it.

On top of all the medical uncertainty (if indeed you’re still uncertain — I AIN’T) is the fact that our business has changed quite dramatically in ways that directly affect the value of the vendor-focused part of the show. NAB used to be among the only ways to see gear in person — and we NEEDED to see it in person to make sure people weren’t lying to us. LOL Or to talk to vendors to take their measure — is this somebody I can trust?

I remember speaking to a storage vendor in 1995 and asking if their demos were running off drives or off tape decks, and he acted like I insulted him. “Of COURSE the demos are running off tape decks. There’s not a drive manufacturer in the world whose stuff is reliable enough to work all day at a trade show. Anybody who tells you otherwise is a liar or an idiot.” LOL

Hey, and remember when we needed to be persuaded that HD was real? I know very high profile pundits at high-profile magazines (one of which is still around even LOL), and well into the 21st century, he was adamant that HD was a scam, that nobody would ever be tell the difference, and that for SURE you’d never be able to get it over cable. (Nobody even talked about it over the internet. AOL was still in more homes than the internet WELL into this century.) But the rest of us still went to NAB to see for ourselves, our own noses against the glass, because nothing else would persuade us.

Same with RED’s first NAB. People were lined up for hours just to see if it was real, to see if the pictures were really any good, whatever. Show me.

There was also this sense that we NEEDED something new NOW. As in, all of us were upgrading our computers every year 20-25 years ago, because we had to keep up. If Apple would have offered a new computer every six months, I’d have bought it, and I bet you would have too. Plus this endless array of doo-dads, plug-ins, and all kinds of things that we couldn’t imagine. We had to go to EVERY BOOTH to find out wha t we didn’t know, and ended the show exhausted, dehydrated to the point of hallucination, and certain that we’d still missed something that would have changed our lives IF ONLY WE’D KNOWN.

It was Fear of Missing Out while being IN THE ROOM. It’s insane that anything should have ever had this kind of power over us.

Now it’s more like, “I guess this is the year that I can swap out my 2008 Mac.” LOL Stuff works. What I have this year will probably work for as long as I want it to.

And if Sam Mestman at LumaForge tells me he has a new box of Jelly for me, I’ll believe him. I don’t need to sniff it in person. I’ll let Aharon demo the new Red Giant plug-ins for me on YouTube.

I mean, kinda the question I have for you folks still working for a living (me, I TALK about working for a living), what do you even need from ANY manufacturer? Sure, new stuff is always fun, but do you need to SEE it? In person?

Having worked for enterprise-class vendors, where salesdudes might make a significant portion of their entire year’s number in a matter of days, it’s hard to imagine that they won’t find SOME way to get together in Las Vegas. It’s not like NOBODY from Apple has been going to NAB since the company stopped doing booths on the floor.

And the North Hall crowd ain’t goin’ nowhere. Building infrastructure takes teams of people from bunches of companies, and they can’t haul their gear from customer to customer. It’s just more efficient to be in one place. But tens of thousands of civilians tromping through aisles of booths to pick up paper brochures? Not so much.

Bill, circling back to you, I’m intrigued that you’re not going because Vegas is a relatively short trip for you, and because you’ve said that for so many years, you didn’t need to see anything on the floor. You went to things like FCPWORKS presentations and user group events, and I agree. I’d long felt like seeing colleagues and a handful of suite presos were more valuable than gold, and the floor was skippable for anyone whose job doesn’t require it.

Like Oliver Peters. ☺ Back around the turn of the century, Oliver and I met for dinner on the eve of NAB every year. Even though we both lived in Florida at the time (he still does), it was the one time of year we got to catch up in person. What are YOUR plans this time, man?

I’m also curious to hear from anyone who’s of the “Just TRY and stop me from going” persuasion. I definitely remember the days of, “The survival of my business depends on me attending”, whereas maybe today it’s, “MY survival might depend on me NOT attending.”

Also just saw this over on the electric twitter machine, someone @’ing us here at the COW….

[Oliver Peters]

I agree that much of the product info is available online. But, “community” is a reason for many to attend shows like this. Seeing old friends or meeting new friends in person out of folks you’ve only known through online communications. Side events like Avid Connect, Faster Together Stage, Post Production World, etc. Remember that the exhibits are only a portion of the overall NAB Convention and that if you are an actual NAB member, then there are numerous meetings and sessions in addition to the exhibit floors.

Nevertheless, there is one thing that you don’t get from online info, except the boiled down perspective of various writers, pundits, pontificators, etc. That’s the “walking around” impression you get from seeing the booths. That’s where you spot trends. For example, this year it may be interesting and telling to see how many vendors use the new Mac Pro or the XDR display as part of their demos. In years past, it’s been interesting to see how many and who used FCPX on their stands and why.

Then there’s the discovery of new up-and-comers in the so-called “pipe and drape” sections in the backs of the halls. These are the ones who won’t get press. NAB is often a make-it-or-break-it showing for their company. Avid, EditShare, and many others started there.

So I do think shows like NAB serve a value for people in our industry. If I don’t go this year (TBD), I will certainly miss it.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Tim Gerhard]

We decided to pull our MagStor LTO systems exhibit this year due to the virus.

Tim Gerhard
MagStor Inc.
LTO Solutions TB3 / SAS / USB / FC
614-505-6333
tgerhard@magstor.com

[Shane Ross]

I just happen to be missing it this year due to other reasons, so I didn’t even book anything yet. Glad that I didn’t. I’m wondering how much of a ghost town it’ll be. Normally I’m hired by AJA to be a booth jockey, but I’d have hard passed by now.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Mark Suszko]

Huge hardware convention in Chicago cancelled… college sports teams are dropping away games… Japan took all their schools off line for a month… the Hadj seems like it’s been cancelled this year… Airlines have cancelled new pilot classes, sensing an oncoming glut of pilots with fewer runs to make… Italy is asking people to stop kissing…

The disruption is wider than just our industry.

If I had to make a prediction, it’s going to take a year to get a handle on this health crisis and get prophylaxis and treatment worked out to a point where the general public is no longer in a panic about travel. Travel and hospitality is one of the largest industries in the world and a lot of low income people depend on it for their livelihood. That’s going to to really strain the social safety net.

I’m guessing there will still be an NAB convention next year, though it might be smaller. Or, it might transform into a fleet of smaller shows in major cities, where the vendors come to you, instead of the other way around. It would be cool to have an NAB back in Chicago…

I agree that this situation will provide a stimulus to development of remote editing hardware and software as well as changes in production practices. But it’s only an acceleration of an existing trend.

[Oliver Peters]

[Mark Suszko] “I agree that this situation will provide a stimulus to development of remote editing hardware and software as well as changes in production practices. But it’s only an acceleration of an existing trend.”

I’m not sure I would make that extrapolation.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Tim Wilson]

[Tim Gerhard] “We decided to pull our MagStor LTO systems exhibit this year due to the virus.”

Thanks for the update, Tim! Be sure to send us your news to press @ creativecow.net and we’ll get it posted for you.

I have to say that I’m not especially paranoid about getting sick in general. What strikes me as imprudent right now is getting into a tube of germs to fly to the one event in the world where I’ve come home sick every single time, then climbing into another tube of germs with people who’ve been at the same event, almost certainly as sick as me.

I was trying to remember the year that SARS affected the Asian community, and vendors from that part of the world pulled out of NAB. One thing I hadn’t considered until a recent conversation is that some companies might not be given a choice because of travel restrictions.

Not that we need to decide NOW what we’re going to do with every trade show ever. But this year is different, and treating it like it’s the same just doesn’t seem prudent to me.

[Oliver Peters] “Avid, EditShare, and many others started there.”

They started in very different NABs. They were dramatically smaller shows then, and much more focused on people who had the money to attend. There weren’t free tickets in any large numbers, and travel to Vegas was difficult and expensive — nothing like the Disneyland-ified travel packages, tons of flights available world of today, where the majority of people walking the floor aren’t there to buy five and six figure systems like the ones Avid and EditShare launched with.

You used to need money to fly to Las Vegas, you needed money to get on the floor, “cheap” NLEs like Media 100 ran $30,000 and up, “cheap” camera rigs like BetaSP ran in the same range, and you can double those prices for today’s economy. THAT’s who went to NAB. People who had mid-five to low-six figures to spend for the CHEAP stuff, so you COULD launch companies like Avid and EditShare there. It’s not the same now.

I’m all for the democratization of video — I’m only in this industry because of it, and it’s why the COW exists at all — but I can also tell you that after working in the Boris FX booth for three years at the turn of the century, the Apple booth in 2003, and the Avid booth in 04-06, that I spent easily half my time explaining to people what video editing even is. You really haven’t experienced tire-kicking until you’ve actually worked an NAB booth.

That was fine by me, though. We all start somewhere, and I’d rather help people who knew they didn’t know stuff than waste my time with the NO-it-alls who came to the booth just to yell at me or try to make me feel stupid. (You’d be amazed, or maybe you wouldn’t be, by how many people seemed to come to NAB for the SOLE purpose of yelling about something.)

Along the way, I definitely saw people’s inclination to spend money plummet like a stone.

I mentioned in my earlier post why I think the North Hall crowd will be around until the sun goes nova, but for our end of the market, I think NAB could prosper more as a training and meeting event….but I’m not sure that even THAT is necessary for anything more than habit. There are energized user groups around country (I’ve presented to scores of them myself) and around the world (I’ve presented at a good handful of those too), and I think that as vendors find that it’s cheaper AND SAFER to do road shows, regional events, and user groups that the ROI on NAB is fading fast.

Think about a company like LumaForge. I’m sure that they’ve made money at NAB, and will for as long as they feel like going, but they don’t NEED it. At this point, I think they do way, way more to add value to NAB than NAB is adding to them, and they could do darn near all of it online, with a handful of local events or a road show that they could do for a fraction of NAB.

I hope nobody anywhere gets sick, and I hope everyone recovers. Get your flu vaccines, people. I don’t have any doubt that we’ll solve this problem and be able to jet around wherever we want next year.

But I’m also aware from having some immuno-compromised folks in my family that I could easily survive something like the flu or Coronavirus that I might pass along as a carrier, that would kill THEM. I gotta tell you, I’d really rather not live with the burden of killing an older or younger loved one because I felt the need to see a bunch of new widgets or old friends. It can all wait this year.

And to Mark’s point above, I think it’s also a good time to re-evaluate whether a show done in this manner, in this place, is the right way to do any of this.