Tech-Notes

Road Show

A Taste of NAB 2005

The Taste of NAB Road Show is not affiliated with the National Association of Broadcasters.
 
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Why the Trip?
Subject: A Taste of NAB 2005 Road Show
By: Larry Bloomfield

 
There are very few opportunities for engineers to see, first-hand, what’s new and to have the chance to keep up with the latest “whatevers.” Not sending at least one engineer to NAB is tantamount to stifling your engineering departments technical education and preventing the facility from keep abreast of what’s going in the wonderful world of television and broadcasting in general. How utterly stupid! 
 

We’ve decided to do the Road Show again, after NAB 2005. As you know from the last three years and the website, we do this so that some of the new technology from NAB 2005 will get out to the grassroots engineers that didn’t make it to the big one in the desert. During our first year, 2002, we had approximately 450 total attendance at the 31 venues visited. During our second year, 2003, we had over 1055 total attendance at the 36 venues we visited. During this past year, our third, 2004, we had over 1100 in attendance at 48 venues and we received over 120 e-mails commending us for our efforts. The Tech-Notes - Taste of NAB Road Show is not and never has been intended to be a substitute for the real thing.

We ask companies with technology they'd like to get out to the grassroots engineer to help us by underwriting efforts such as these. Tech-Notes is a work of love – it always has been, so when we do things like the Taste of NAB Road Show, we need all the help we can get – both nationally and locally.

We learned that the more successful venues were where we did the Road Show in conjunction with the local SBE and/or SMPTE Chapter/Section and never do a presentation in a restaurant. If you’d like us to visit your area, work with your Chapter and/or Section; let us know as we’re putting our schedule together now for 2005. Anyone out there that would like their technology delivered to forty or more venues, let us know so we can plan to include you in our trip. RoadShow@Tech-Notes.TV

We’ll leave our home/offices here in Florence, OR on April 24th and will travel south through California, then head east along the southern part of the country. We’ll head up the east coast, after Florida, and plan to be in New England sometime in early to mid June. We’ll then begin heading for the west coast across the northern part of the country. We’ll jog up-into or down-into the heartland venues from which ever route is closest. We hope to finish off sometime in late August.

It is not always possible for us to hold the Road Show on the same days you hold your local meetings, so we need your flexibility to be able to keep the Road Show schedule. We have no problem holding the Road Show in conjunction with any other local activities, so long as we can expose the most engineers to the technology we’ll be bring with us. Please keep in mind: this is an educational effort, not a sales shot.

We’ll also be meeting with the SURVIVORS of the broadcast industry, our dear follow members of the Order of the Iron Test Pattern, as we across the country. That, within itself, should be a lot of fun and we’re looking forward to it.

We’re starting to create the new pages for the website. Please contact us so we can include your area and/or organization in this effort.

Tech-Notes – Taste of NAB 2005 Road Show
1980 25th St.
Florence, OR 97439-9717
(541) 902-2424 Office
(541) 503-217-0712 Fax

Why the Taste of NAB 2005 Road Show is a good bet? Just look at these statistics from this past year :

 

  • Venues: Forty-eight (http://www.tech-notes.tv/2004/2004-1-Itinerary.htm) 96% at local SBE Chapter meetings.
  • Duration: Four months. (April 26th – August 23rd)
  • Traveled: Eighteen-thousand miles
  • Attendance: 1105+ broadcast industry folks
  • Target audience: Broadcast Engineers and Technicians
  • Received: 124 E-mail thanking us and/or asking us to return next year (2005). (http://www.tech-notes.tv/2004/2004_comments.pdf)
  • Collected 809 business cards, over half of which were hand-written on the blanks we provided.
  • Door prizes given away: over $45,000 spread over the 48 venues and another $10,000 give away at the end of the tour. (http://www.tech-notes.tv/2004/2004-1.htm) Local winners on each venue’s page and end of tour winners at URL above.
  • Return on investment: incalculable and beyond our wildest expectations. – Very successful.
  • Conclusion:  NO other technical Road Show even comes close to these figures. You be crazy not to join in on The Road Show – A Taste of NAB 2005.

 

As a member of both the Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE) and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) I have notified the SBE and SMPTE chapter and section chairs of this educational opportunity and many have responded very favorably. In some venues, A Taste of NAB will be their monthly program. If you are not a member of one of these organizations, you are still invited to attend. Membership applications will be available, should you be interested.
 
If you are an individual, you can participate by attending. If you are a company, you can participate on a local partnership basis. The national sponsors know that some of the local partners may wish to show competing goods and services or even show up to help support our sponsor's efforts. That’s they way it was at the real NABs. In that spirit, you are invited to join with me in making this educational opportunity a very big success and possibly reaping some benefits as well.
 
It makes little difference weather your station, network or facility is a member of NAB or not, the experience and potential for the interchange of ideas and technologies doesn’t happen anywhere else on this scale and it’s a crying shame to miss the opportunity. Not getting some exposure would be like taking the bean-counter’s calculators away from them – now there’s an idea.
 
Tech-Notes has put together this Taste of NAB  “road show” in an effort to afford those who couldn’t make it to Las Vegas an opportunity to see and hear some of those services and products that were there in their own backyard. The response to this idea, to date, has been very positive.  If the engineers can’t make it to NAB, then the products and services at NAB should go to them! Obviously we’ll not take the place of NAB, but we can bring a part of it with us. Our van isn't that big, but something is better than nothing. Our sponsors have promised that their local reps will be present in many of the venues to assist in answering questions. For those engineers who are able to make it to NAB this year, the trip will serve to be reinforcement of what they saw. 
 
Why me and Tech-Notes? Many engineers know me through Broadcast Engineering magazine over the past several years, and through other writing efforts such as the Tech-Notes. This will be a two way street: I'll also get the opportunity to meet and speak with many of my peers, to hear their stories and share some of NAB with them.
 
Jim Mendrala will be keeping the home fires burning and be with us in spirit, while Fred Lawrence and I relish this opportunity to meet you all. 
 
Let's do it!
 

If you need more information, please contact me: Larry@Tech-Notes.TV.

 
Larry Bloomfield, KA6UTC
1980 25th Street
Florence, OR 97439-9717
 
(541) 902-2424 – Office
(Forwards to Cell when not in office)
 
Publisher: Tech-Notes
http://www.Tech-Notes.TV 
  For additional information: E-mail me!

 

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