[Dmods]

Great point regarding necessity. And I definitely understand the serious costs to attend and exhibit – especially when it is a constantly inflated price – and takes most exhibitors longer in their fiscal year to recover the costs. Real value or not, 100,000+ attendees perceive some value. And perception has a way of becoming a frightful reality. You may be right about the full demise of trade shows, my point is I’ve heard people predict the demise for over a decade – and they had help with 911 and a bad economy, yet they still go on. A main cause is the inclusion of mini-conferences under the umbrella of NAB that keeps people interested. So maybe the need for exhibition is less, but the point of a larger conference seems to be still relevant.

[Dmods]

I’m totally a person who believes rethinking and constantly evaluating your return on investment is a critical piece to running a successful business. And I totally understand “skipping” IBC and some of the smaller international exhibitions. However, we are talking about one of the largest trade shows on earth where product visibility is a key ingredient to “buzz” when you consider the internationl audience of NAB. And don’t forget that this includes the international press.

The demise of trade shows (especially NAB) has been predicted for over a decade, and yet we are closing in on the pre 911 attendance numbers. The fact of the matter is, NAB is the umbrella that has upwards of 10 mini-conferences and an exhibition. If anything the NAB show is more relevant as the show is not just about broadcasters anymore. And while Avid may save a few hundred thousand not having the floor booth, they will most likely still spend plenty on the other involvement.

While I found my visit to Avid’s booth last year very unimpressive (did like the script sync), in the past, when a new product was introduced, this was my best chance to look at the hardware and ask questions and compare other products on the floor. “We can do four streams…” Run over to Apple, “It depends…” Anyway, I spend the entire week and so often I come across questions I need answered due to new products (affecting workflows, etc.) and want to discuss how my current system will integrate – and this can occur over the entire four days as you consider budgets, partnerships, etc.
What’s more efficient – waiting for a June local visit from Avid and then an October visit from another vendor to see if things will work together or one stop shopping?

While Avid will be at NAB. What will this look like? Will it be hard to get into sessions, parties, or will I have to be an ACSR? My point is, questions that need answering aren’t going to go away – new products or not. And I truely hope Avid’s strategy to have a presence at NAB is as inclusive as having a floor exhibit and not such a challenge that I have to hope I get “tickets” to some event so I can hear a marketing speech and not get my questions answered.

[Dmods]

We have a 6TGB system, 8 ports (GIG E) connections. We have 14 FCP workstations (mix of old G4, G5, and MacPros). In addition we have 2 Avid systems (one on MacPro and the other on WinXP). We use all systems together. Vast majority of footage is DV25/HDV/DV50. However, I’ve worked with uncompressed SD video with no issues (but not all workstations were “online” at this time). Up until a month ago, this system was flawless, however, system had a motherboard failure. EditShare shipped me a new chassis, changed back all of the guts (took me 30-minutes to complete), and we were back up…sort of. Since then we have had some serious issues with connection and logging off (locks the entire workstation). EditShare is working with me and I think we are close to solving the issue.
Anyway, the point is that until this catastrophe, EditShare was great. There tech support and general follow-up has been good. Demoed a few systems, no one played as friendly with both Avid and FCP environments, and no one came in at that cost.
I hope this helps.