Ron Lindeboom
2
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
-
Thanks Adam for the shorter link, I appreciate it as it doesn’t blow out the interface.
I have also edited Michael’s original post with it so it uses your tinyurl link also.
Thanks again, Adam.
Ron Lindeboom
-
[walter biscardi] “I just really took offense to Tim lumping all folks on the Show Floor as not knowing what they are talking about and not being able to get any useful information on the show floor. Especially when I work alongside other Cow leaders like Shane Ross, Jerry Hofmann to name a few.”
As you may have noted from my earlier comment, Walter, I have my opinions just as Tim Wilson has his. While we most times agree with each others opinions, we do not always do so and each of us is a different individual.
Tim is mellower than me on most occasions, but sometimes he’s not.
:o)
Thanks for the heads up on the CES story at MSNBC, I was unaware of that aspect of the issue. Thanks for giving me a new drum to add to the set. ;o)
Have fun, Walter.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
Join the COW’s LinkedIn Group
Now in the COW Magazine: Commercials. A look at the history, strategy, techniques and production workflows of successful commercials. All brought to you by some of the COW’s brightest members. Accept no substitutes!Would you like to be in Creative COW Magazine with your story or contribution? Contact me.
Do you have your complimentary subscription to Creative COW Magazine yet?
-
[Michael Belanger] “Wouldn’t Avid and Apple have put the space on hold and paid up last year.”
They can cancel within a certain time period and do so with specified penalties based on when they cancel. So yes, they likely paid penalties but far less than the cost of attending the show. At a certain point, they decided that the returns just weren’t there.
These are not stupid companies and they have incredible marketing departments and outside trend analysis and user survey organizations that they each work with, so they did not base their decisions on whim and caprice. These were hwithout a doubt deliberated financial decisions.
But with the staggering yearly increases in costs to attend NAB as an exhibitor, these companies decided it just didn’t make sense any longer.
Me, I hope that NAB is getting the message that they can’t keep doing this to companies anymore — especially when they tout their pre-show sign-up numbers and I can’t recall ever seeing the actual floor attendance “they really showed up” numbers.
[Michael Belanger] “Not sure how much they could save. They must have put down some sort of deposit to hold a space that big.”
Quite enough that they thought that it was worth it. The deposit, fees and penalties were likely a small part of the real costs involved with really showing up.
Avid got off lighter, I am sure, as they canceled far enough out that their penalties would likely be less than Apple’s. But in both cases I doubt that their penalties were anywhere near the total costs of actually being at the show.
[Michael Belanger] “…it will be a much calmer and less exciting NAB.”
This is one of the inherent things that NAB has to get hold of: the companies make NAB what it is, not NAB itself. It is but a handful of attendees that attend the NAB functions. The conferences are done by contract with other outside training companies, they are just “in association” with NAB. The floor traffic is there to see the products and the vendors. There are few who hang out at the NAB entry booths.
Without the companies and products, NAB will not only be less exciting but will likely attract far fewer people.
With far fewer people, fewer companies will want to attend next year’s gathering.
And the spiral becomes an increasingly repetitive pattern as the years go on.
That’s how I see it, and others are free to disagree with that prediction.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
Join the COW’s LinkedIn Group
Now in the COW Magazine: Commercials. A look at the history, strategy, techniques and production workflows of successful commercials. All brought to you by some of the COW’s brightest members. Accept no substitutes!Would you like to be in Creative COW Magazine with your story or contribution? Contact me.
Do you have your complimentary subscription to Creative COW Magazine yet?
-
[jenna gordon] “…if I decide to use music.. where do I go to pay for copyright fees?”
Welcome to Creative COW, Jenna. I hope that you find the site useful.
I will leave others to address other aspects of your questions, but I’d like to focus on your music issue.
The single most useful tool I have found for creating great audio beds is Smartsound Sonicfire Pro. You can download a demo of it HERE. The thing I have always loved about Smartsound Sonicfire Pro is that you can get professional audio scores quickly and cheaply. They also can easily be set to exact lengths and on-screen elements far faster than editing audio from library CDs or other means.
If you would like to see a “reviewtorial” of the product to get a feel of how it works in action, please see my article here at the COW.
Some people prefer using tools like Garageband and Soundbooth but loop editing takes a lot of time and so I find Sonicfire Pro far more useful.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
Join the COW’s LinkedIn Group
Now in the COW Magazine: Commercials. A look at the history, strategy, techniques and production workflows of successful commercials. All brought to you by some of the COW’s brightest members. Accept no substitutes!Would you like to be in Creative COW Magazine with your story or contribution? Contact me.
Do you have your complimentary subscription to Creative COW Magazine yet?
-
I wasn’t referring to this thread, Randall. Why I said three months is due to your general manner in our forums. You are especially tepid in this thread, probably due to the way that some of your recent insults with people got you slapped down by me and others.
But I must commend you most sincerely, and I do mean that, as you have become much more balanced and respectful — especially in this thread.
I will be quite up front with you, Randall. I hate NAB. As I said somewhere else in this thread, I have repeatedly had them screw around with my contracts, leave important things off of them that were clearly agreed to, had wrong booth number assignments made (after negotiating specific booths and then seeing them not end up on the contract), ad nauseum.
To be even more brutally honest with you, I like them so little that I refused their advertising this year in Creative COW Magazine and told them that we would not accept it. We wanted to send them a message as they can’t treat people the way they do. They are bullies in my opinion and they think that they can do whatever they wish. Me, I disagree and I am one stubborn man that you don’t want to screw with — especially in a war of principle.
I applaud both Apple and Avid and I will cheer the next round of defectors, as well.
As I said, the only thing I am sorry about in any of this is that I won’t get to see my friends this year. That was the part of NAB that I loved. The technology I can learn about in a myriad of places and I hardly think that I can only get accurate answers from those manning the booths at NAB.
Just as in life in general, you learn who to listen to and which voices you won’t. I choose my friends with care and my counselors with even more care.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
Join the COW’s LinkedIn Group
Now in the COW Magazine: Commercials. A look at the history, strategy, techniques and production workflows of successful commercials. All brought to you by some of the COW’s brightest members. Accept no substitutes!Would you like to be in Creative COW Magazine with your story or contribution? Contact me.
Do you have your complimentary subscription to Creative COW Magazine yet?
-
[Michael Belanger] “Is there a chance Apple may do an about face? In your article Ron you mentioned not much flack from users. Any place we can go and tell them that we are not pleased??”
I doubt that they’ll be back. The Pro Apps Team really did lobby hard for the company not to pull from the show and they really wanted to go but in the end, NAB’s never-ending parade of price increases came back to bite them this year — hard. Apple’s $15 million will not be showing up and that has to hurt NAB and the Las Vegas businesses who also can’t seem to resist raising rates every year, even though businesses and Average Joes are being especially hard pressed this year. Avid likely spends equally as much and so with the two of them gone, that has to put a big crunch on NAB’s wallet. It will also easily translate into fewer people going to NAB in 2008. Still, they are demanding healthy rate increases and things that sold for far less last year, have much higher costs for the same thing this year.
This year, I think is going to be a pivotal year for NAB and I think that 2009 is going to find a humbler NAB with hat in hand, trying hard to win back their lost love. Who knows if either of the Two Big As will be back. I doubt they will. And from there, I think that the event is doomed to decline in size and scope and eventually return to its pre-multimedia persona as an event for broadcasters — after all, that is what it is supposed to be, isn’t it?
But as I said somewhere else in this thread, someone has to pay for those trophies they give at the dinners they hold, and so maybe their rate increases and endless fees are not really all that out of line after all.
;o)
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
Join the COW’s LinkedIn Group
Now in the COW Magazine: Commercials. A look at the history, strategy, techniques and production workflows of successful commercials. All brought to you by some of the COW’s brightest members. Accept no substitutes!Would you like to be in Creative COW Magazine with your story or contribution? Contact me.
Do you have your complimentary subscription to Creative COW Magazine yet?
-
[walter biscardi] “And three more voices to go back the other way. I’ve seen way too many threads in the Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Color, AJA Kona, BlackMagic that have completely false or inaccurate information. Someone corrects that information only to have it shot down again by someone else or the original person.”
Wow, I think it may be time for me and Kathlyn to just pull the plug on this turd and not bother with this anymore. If the COW is just noise, then I for one think it’s outlived its usefulness and it is clearly time to put my energy into something more useful.
Nothing lasts forever.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
Join the COW’s LinkedIn Group
Now in the COW Magazine: Commercials. A look at the history, strategy, techniques and production workflows of successful commercials. All brought to you by some of the COW’s brightest members. Accept no substitutes!Would you like to be in Creative COW Magazine with your story or contribution? Contact me.
Do you have your complimentary subscription to Creative COW Magazine yet?
-
[Chris Lupetti] “I just hope I didn’t leave anyone out from the PodCast.”
No, you didn’t, well, except for Cowdog. He was the one barking those subliminal messages about beer and kibble. He does that kind of stuff. Next time I’ll leave him home.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
Join the COW’s LinkedIn Group
Now in the COW Magazine: Commercials. A look at the history, strategy, techniques and production workflows of successful commercials. All brought to you by some of the COW’s brightest members. Accept no substitutes!Would you like to be in Creative COW Magazine with your story or contribution? Contact me.
Do you have your complimentary subscription to Creative COW Magazine yet?
-
[walter biscardi] “No one answer is perfect, but to broadly say the information at a trade show is inferior to the information on the Cow is definitely skewing the information. There’s equal bad information to go around.”
I hate to disagree with my esteemed friend, Walter, but when bad information is given at the COW, there is nearly always another voice that will correct it.
When bad advice is given by someone at a booth at a trade show, there is almost never anyone there that can correct it.
Equal, I think not. At least not to me.
But then, maybe I am just overprotective of something that I see as being quite self-correcting and speedily self-balancing. The old adage that there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors is still quite correct today.
Over the years, I have heard many false claims bandied about at trade shows; claims that I knew were patently incorrect, but that I did not feel the liberty to correct under the circumstances.
I think that getting great people like Walter, Tim Kolb, Bob Zelin, Mike Downey and others definitely helps in this regard, but there are many others that I could name by name that I have stood there rolling my eyes while thinking to myself that this is, well…bull.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
Join the COW’s LinkedIn Group
Now in the COW Magazine: Commercials. A look at the history, strategy, techniques and production workflows of successful commercials. All brought to you by some of the COW’s brightest members. Accept no substitutes!Would you like to be in Creative COW Magazine with your story or contribution? Contact me.
Do you have your complimentary subscription to Creative COW Magazine yet?
-
Randall:
Over the last three months or more, I have to say that I don’t think that I have seen anyone on this forum toss out insults as freely as you, mon ami. It’s why I feel no need to handle you with “kid gloves.” You have proven over your time here that you don’t feel the need to restrain oneself or extend the that type of courtesy to others.
As to screw me, my pompous friend, I have spent myself into the poor house to help and honor people. Of the 12 years I have been doing this, only about three of them has the COW carried its own weight. At one point, we were literally close to $250,000 in debt and we are not rich. In fact, over the years there have been three times when we simply couldn’t juggle enough balls in the air that three different people stepped up and paid the costs for the month. God bless ’em, we say. But we were too stubborn to quit because we love this community and most of the people in it.
When we did start making money, we poured it right back into this, adding more free services as fast as we could and hiring more people to make this site more useful to people. When we start a publishing company, instead of the obligatory 8% to 13% that most people pay their authors, we cut 2/3s of the gross to our authors, with all of the expenses coming out of our third. ALL the expenses, no chargebacks whatsoever. Unprecedented in the history of this industry. I will put my honors where they should be, in investing in the people. I will leave NAB to collect the checks and give out the tinsel. You can see the value wherever you wish, mon ami.
I don’t give a rat’s patootey that NAB gives some trophy or a dinner to honor someone. They charge so much freaking money that they should be giving the honorees money — real money. After all, they make millions off each show.
The greatest honor we have probably ever received is when we’ve had people call us or walk up to us at a tradeshow and tell us that “Ron and Kathlyn, man my family loves you.” (We have really had it happen more than once.) We ask why. “Because back when you started all this I was flailing around at my job trying to get all this new digital stuff figured out so I didn’t get laid off and lose the job I’ve had for a long time. I found your site and I have been coming ever since.”
Hearing stuff like that is a real honor. But you don’t get it and I will tell you that again. If that offends you, oh well, it’s true and there’s no way around it. If NAB was doing the kinds of things that they should be doing, there would be no room for the COW — thankfully they don’t have that much vision, and their honors equate more to the “high seats at the feast” variety than those honors found digging trenches with the common folk.
Rather than trophies, we do things like help people in the COW to stay in business when they are in real trouble. We have boxed up studio gear and sent it to leaders here when they’ve been burglarized. We have written checks to people when we noticed that their phone got shut off or their power was turned off because business was rough. We have negotiated deals to keep leaders in business when they lost their businesses in partnership break-ups and bankruptcies.
We’ll leave the trophies to someone else, thank you.
So, Randall, when you have done more than demand respect while throwing insults, I may listen to you, until then your voice is not one of the ones here that I place a lot of stock in. And I will say it again, you really don’t get much about the COW and your ignorance of what this really is is quite apparent to me.
Lastly, I don’t ask ANYONE to agree with me, agreement here is NOT mandatory. You seem to be the one that somehow feels people have to agree with you or else. I have MANY leaders here who don’t agree with me at all, I never choose leaders because they mimic my beliefs. In fact, I joke that if everyone around here reflected my opinions it’d be a pretty boring place.
In closing, the ONLY thing I like about NAB is the people that attend it. Over the years, I have NEVER had NAB not try to pull a fast one on my contract and just last year, they tried to give me a booth assignment with a booth number that didn’t exist. Good thing I caught it, or we’d have shown up thinking we were getting a booth near Adobe and Sony, only to be told based on my experience of working with them that there was an unfortunate mistake and that the only booth available is this one here in the back. It wasn’t the first time that that has happened. More than once they’ve pulled that kind of crap on us. I personally don’t trust them at all.
But hey, apparently they give really nice trophies, I hear.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
Join the COW’s LinkedIn Group
Now in the COW Magazine: Commercials. A look at the history, strategy, techniques and production workflows of successful commercials. All brought to you by some of the COW’s brightest members. Accept no substitutes!Would you like to be in Creative COW Magazine with your story or contribution? Contact me.
Do you have your complimentary subscription to Creative COW Magazine yet?