Ron Lindeboom
2
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Running anti-advertising filters screws up the code and causes all kinds of issues with sites like the COW. Every time you guys say this, I click and look and yep, they are all there — no issues.
It’s local to your machine.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
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Thanks, Abraham.
You da man.
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Can we please remove it from his user profile also, Abraham? Is that doable?
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.
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Chris,
I never said nor implied that I am afraid to “miss production time” or that I couldn’t afford to take a break from time to time. And Tim Wilson never said that every business is in danger of getting their clients swiped by a competitor in a few days if they take off. (But for some, they do lose customers and I have seen it happen.)
What I did say was that, for some — your mileage may vary — NAB eats up a week that can be more valuably spent on something else. If you are going to go and then spend little time at NAB but instead hit floorshows and restaurants and other activities as you say, then I think that shows that the real value of NAB is not really in NAB but the “excuse of NAB.”
If you have the money to go to gourmet restaurants, floorshows and take so much time off from NAB, then (for me anyway) I can think of a lot better places to spend a week and the money than in Las Vegas — arguably the most plastic city in the world.
But again, that’s just my opinion.
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.
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[Mark Suszko] “Lectures usually do not stick with an audience not ready to receive the knowledge.”
Some of the smartest words ever uttered (or is it uddered?) on this forum.
:o)
We *have* an employee who knows well the value of the two ears he was given. We *had* one whom time proved to be unappreciative of the positive outcome that could ensue from actually using his ears.
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.
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[Christopher Wright] “I can definitely say that the experience of attending NAB and the experience of “manning” a booth are quite different indeed!”
I have done both. I find that both are actually quite a burn-out. Even when I would go to NAB just to wander the floors and check out what was there, I’d get home fried to a crisp and need days to recover. Staying up all hours and then driving oneself hard is not a way to spend a week. Especially while throwing a fairly large wad of cash at the situation.
One of the biggest and rarely considered costs of NAB is that it takes you away from your business for a week and then you usually have a few days to a week to ramp back up to normal.
All in all, NAB is not really geared for answering technical questions. An example would be Walter’s recent problem with his CD/DVD record/printer. Sure you could check out the various units but I highly doubt that they’d give you the chance to really use one on the floor to the point that you would uncover some of the issues that he ran into in his own experience.
On the other hand, most VARs and dealers that I know take these kinds of issues very seriously and will pound on their manufacturers for solutions or they will drop the line.
For me, I use well known and trusted VARs and they tell me pretty straight which products are bull and which ones are real. Sure, they have their prejudices but in the end I nearly always get a real solution.
And this year I’ll save an extra week (as well as the few ‘ramp back up’ follow-up days) and a lot of money that I can put towards it all…
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.
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[Scott Thomas] “My personal feelings are that the rumors of Apple selling their ProApp division were probably started by Avid.”
Oh please…
Avid didn’t start it and while Autodesk *might* seem a good fit at first glance, the truth is, Autodesk would be a nightmare for the Pro Apps *if* Apple were shopping them around. I doubt they are and if they are, I highly doubt that Autodesk would be a good fit.
I could go into a TON of reasons why but it’s midnight, I’m tired and I am going to bed.
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.
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[Steve Wargo] “I seriously doubt that very many made a decision to buy FCP based on a trip to NAB. While it’s great to touch, try out and fondle, my buying decisions are usually made ahead of time and NAB is just a chance to confirm my decision.”
I bought my original Media 100 back in 1994 without going to NAB. I visited a local dealer and got my hands on one there.
When I switched to Avid following a few years with M100, I went to a local dealer for it, as well.
When I switched from Avid to the Adobe line of tools, I used the web (might I recommend CreativeCOW.net, thank you) for my research.
The only thing I ever bought from NAB was my Videonics Effetto Pronto (an After Effects-like hardware accelerated compositor) and I wish I had saved my money as it didn’t last long. (Although I loved the tool and the team was a great bunch of people.)
I really think that basing your buying decision on the few minutes that you get to have your hands on something at NAB is a bad way to buy. I have never seen any station on any tool there where I got to spend more than a few minutes on it.
Just my opinion.
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.
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[Tim Kolb] “With Avid, I think beyond the official reasoning, there is an obvious financial problem there. Ask the hundred+ ex-Avid employees laid off in the last year…”
I can’t think of a single company in this industry of whom the same thing couldn’t be said. I get letters almost daily from associates and friends from most all the companies in this industry that write me and ask if I know anywhere that they might find an opportunity.
Apple is no exception in this category.
I think that sheer numbers have come to haunt NAB and those numbers are the profits that it takes to have and man a booth at NAB. I think that with the democratization of video came the “commoditication” of video. When systems and tools are commodity items, the profits and costs are low. It takes an astronomical number of units to bear the cost of NAB.
Another of the “A” companies that I know who is not an editing software company but has a rather substantial booth at NAB every year, once told me that they spend nearly $400,000 to be at NAB. Considering that they sell their products for about $499 a whack, they’d have to sell one hell of a lot of product to make that nut.
As the experiential level of user drops every year, (trust me, it has, as both Kathlyn and I have had many a conversation with people at NAB who ask “What’s digital video?”), NAB is becoming increasingly irrelevant when considered en masse.
As for tent revivals, who needs tents in the days of “24 hour a day television evangelists”? So gone are the tents (with rare exception).
The net is also 24 hour a day and I can’t count the number of people over the years who have come in from one brand of editing system and made a decision to switch to another based on what they learned online. I even see heavy decisions being made here as to which networking software people will use and how to configure and support their network. It happens all the time.
The argument that this stuff requires hands-on facetime is simply becoming increasingly irrelevant in the Day of the Internet — which itself is like a fulltime 24 hour a day tent revival.
Me, I think that NAB made a huge mistake by not giving into what I suspect were Apple’s pointed requests for (shall we say?) heavily discounted floor space at the NAB Expo.
Why?
No company I can think of has the ability to pull easily 30,000 or more people to the show directly on nothing more than that the company is there.
By letting Apple escape because they probably wanted the same kind of deal that they get at Macworld Expo (which I won’t tell you what they pay but let’s just say that it costs you and I more to get there), NAB set in motion a chain of events that is sure to reverberate with serious repercussions in the days ahead.
As I said elsewhere on this subject, I expect to see NAB down to a single building in the next few years.
When Avid did what they did, people surmised incorrectly that there could be little more than financial troubles at the heart of Avid’s decision. By letting Apple take the next turn, NAB itself has promulgated a set of events wherein many companies are going to take out their own pencils and scratch out the real costs and returns from the NAB event, and figure out that they too can stay home.
The bloodletting has just begun and when it’s done, NAB is going to bear a lot more resemblance to what it started as: an event wherein those who need serious broadcast uplink and switching gear show up to strike deals for their station.
I can remember when the Sands was the oddball part of NAB and was the “multimedia” showcase area and was not really considered a real part of NAB by the broadcast contingent. I can remember back then that often Apple and many others didn’t attend. Now people make it out that Apple and others must attend or they are not real.
Philosophers and others have argued “what is real” for eons and I doubt that NAB is going to resolve the age-old question.
But one thing’s for sure: NAB has seen its better days and its glory days are well behind it.
As I have for years asked some of the company heads and others that I know: “How many people on the floor at NAB do you really surprise with anything you are showing and how many do you really teach anything new?” They almost always answer that most people already know exactly what they want and are there to learn a few finer points. But the buying decision has already largely been made.
Me, I believe that as long as the accountants will write checks to send company representatives to NAB to “research” new gear and other purchases, there will always be company reps willing to go and suffer attending Las Vegas floor shows and casinos while picking up a few brochures of products they already know about and then report that: “Yep, I found what we should be getting and here is my research…” (Insert sound of dropping pamphlets here.)
It’s a tough job but someone has to do it.
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.
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Hello Mark,
I have been expecting this for months now and Tim Wilson and I have been talking about this since probably last October sometime.
When Avid announced that they were pulling out, I suspected that Apple would be next — but not if they could get the booth for nothing. I tend to believe that was the whole point of the distance between Apple asking NAB to pull down their name from the Expo exhibitors list and this announcement today (months later) that Apple is officially out. In my opinion I think Apple marketing put the squeeze on NAB management and NAB wouldn’t give them the deal they wanted.
So exit Apple.
I think Apple did the math and realized that they could not really prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they sold even near enough *new* business from NAB to justify the costs.
And NAB costs are HUGE. It would take a LOT of boxes to pay that freight and when calculating not just cash flow dollars but paying this kind of expense with the net profit from these sales, the number of boxes skyrockets off the board.
Yes, Apple and others understand the value of hand-holding with their customers, but they also see what it costs when shows like NAB just keep raising the costs and the hotels in Vegas just raise their rates through the roof when NAB comes to town.
In the end, I said it long ago when it was Avid — that Avid was just the first of many that would figure this out — and now we see Number Two.
Expect many more.
Bessie says that there are enough udders on display in Las Vegas without her showing up and giving a view of hers. So, as we said when Avid made their announcement, we won’t be there.
A week of burning out in Vegas and coming home and collapsing afterwards seems a waste to us at this point in time.
Like both Avid and Apple, we think that we’ll likely in the days ahead take the COW to some local events and film festivals, road shows and other kinds of things. But spending the kinds of dollars needed to do NAB just seems a huge expense that isn’t necessary anymore.
We expect to see NAB 2009 in fewer buildings than customary and in the years ahead, we expect to see it in a single building.
That’s the view from here. What do you see in Los Angeles, Mark?
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?