Looks like NAB ’09 is in full swing. Actually there is only a tiny fraction of the people actually here right now (Sunday) compared to those that will be piling in tomorrow (Monday) and Tuesday. The conference actually started on Saturday with classes and keynote speeches for the weekend. The real madness begins when the exhibition floor opens on Monday. 

 

The above photos will be filled with buses shuttling attendees to and from hotels all over Vegas. Last year, my first year at NAB, I arrived late on Sunday and just barely got checked in at the convention center. This year it was an early flight in and it’s a very different scene. While not a mad stampede of people there’s still a lot of  bodies and boxes and scooters and push-carts wizzing throughout the convention center as convention goers get registered and exhibitors put the final touches on their booths and displays. There’s some cool t-shirts at the NAB store and enough books and DVDs that you could learn about pretty much any topic in production and post.

This is only my second time at NAB but now that I know what to expect I hope to make better time out of my week this year. I’ve actually planned it out a bit! I’ll be attending a number of the session in the Post|Production World Conference throughout the week and hope to further my skills a bit in After Effects, compression and color grading. I’ll be attending the Come Together with Avid at NAB event on Monday evening, the SuperMeet on Tuesday (buffets be damned) and the REDuser party on Wednesday. There’s an Avid focus group on Tuesday and my (insert self-promotion here) presentation on the Keyboard Manifesto at the Final Cut Pro user group SuperBoothon Wednesday at 2:00 pm. And there’ll be lots of exhibit hall walking, product briefing, tech-talk talking and gadget tinkering thrown in as well. Once again I decided not to lug along my laptop, instead relying on the computers available in the press room and my iPhone. We’ll see how much posting can get done. Pictures will go up on the Editblog with everything else here on the Studio Daily blog and at the Editblog on PVC. Truth is, there’s so much to do in a week at NAB that you can’t do everything … things will be missed, people not seen and products not demoed. But there will be enough sensory overload, both on the exhibit floor and off, to last long after the memories of the Vegas strip have faded into the sunset.