I’m Not Going to NAB This Year!

April is a big month for those of us who utilize video in our business. The National Association of Broadcasters event in Las Vegas is an annual gathering of those who either earn a living with video, or have no life to attend to, or in many cases, both. The city isn’t happy about the NAB, either. The casinos are empty, the parties consist of drinking beer and watching laptop computer screens, and the “dancers to your room” are asked, “have you got a scrim for this new matte box I just purchased?”

To avoid being lumped in with the above-noted assemblage, I decided not to attend NAB this year, the first I’ve missed in more than a decade. And, there’s some good reason, too. First of all, you can now see most of the new gadgets online, in local shows, and in manufacturer previews. Because the Internet is such a good avenue for research, the need to go to the show just to get information is no longer an essential part of the production process.

I’m not alone in that thinking, either. A number of large manufacturers, including Apple and Avid no longer feel the NAB is a required part of their business. That doesn’t mean the show will die, but it certainly needs to evolve. In fact, people love an excuse to get together, so the folks at NAB just need to find a new reason to market to all of us who hanker for a new camera, lens, or codec for our data…

Having written all of this, there are some really cool things happening in our industry related to technology. I’ll spend some time during the coming few weeks sharing our thoughts about them.