Climbers at Calico Rocks, Las Vegas
NAB CEO, David K. Rehr, as usual gave a dynamic presentation of the accomplishments and future of the trade organization. From being a convention of only broadcast and radio professionals, NABShow now gathers content, technology, and distribution professionals. I came because of the Post Production World Conference but looked forward to the official NABShow opening as I have the past two years I attended.
The keynote speaker this year was New Jersey-born, now Toronto-based Richard Florida (http://www.creativeclass.com) who gave a talk that for me meant much more than Rehr's polished, actor-like presentation. Rich only faltered the last 10 minutes of his 45-minute talk (no teleprompter) about his theories about what he believes is the third major shift in the way we live and work in America. The first was largely based on agriculture and hunting. The second followed the depression of 1870 which resulted in the migration of workers and wealth producers to factories. Now he says factories are best suited to developing, populous countries like India and China. America has to find its new way of sustaining and creating even greater prosperity in the creativity of its people.
Florida cited a study he did correlating greater prosperity with two indices that he called "the Bohemian factor" and "the gay factor." Places where these were high invariably showed greater innovation and an increase in productivity and prosperity. What characterized these populations was openness to and encouragement of individuals expressing their individual selves. He strongly believes (as I do) that diversity in our population especially through immigration was key to continued vibrancy in creativity. He pointed to Silicon Valley where he says an inordinate proportion of the young innovators are foreign-born. Immigration sifts out the complacent and comfortable. Only the persistent and aggressive and strong individuals manage to immigrate from poorer countries into the U.S. It requires ingenuity and invention to make it here. They use the same qualities to sculpt their own lives from the fantasies they fed on before they came, when need and want prodded and pushed them into finding the dream pastures of America.
I have long thought that the greatest potential for America lay in maximizing its wealth of intellectuality. Affluence gives us the luxury of time to relax and dream. Out of dreams come new ideas. Labor costs are so high in this country and I don't see these going down. People's expectations are hard to reverse. We can only go forward by tapping what minds can create, into what we used to call "service" areas but not just the so-called white-collar desk jobs, most of what is left after factories moved overseas, but professionals who think. Entertainment media are the one area where Americans still excel. The motto of NABShow is Imagination. We still lead the world not just in movies and TV but in software development and these industries are driven by creativity.
I had scheduled myself to attend Douglas Spotted Eagle's program on corporate videos. I realized I was going only because I thought I should go. Wedding videos and corporate videos pay the bills for most beginning video content makers but I can't see myself churning these out. I am not rich but I don't have a family to support so a little goes a long way for me. I can get by on what income I have so I don't have to do what I don't enjoy doing anymore. I attended instead a program led by Alex Lindsay of Pixel Corps (http://www.pixelcorps.com/). Unlike Spotted Eagle who works in Sony Vegas and PCs, Lindsay is a Mac hardware and software user. Their presentations are distinguished, I think, by the computer platform they prefer. Spotted Eagle is very organized and throws out a trove of information that he bandies around as if they were facts; Lindsay sprouts creativity. His presentation is not as organized but he inspired me like Florida inspired me this morning. One of his first slides suggested that if you were just starting out shooting video to choose subjects you enjoy, subjects you are passionate about and to create videos you yourself would enjoy watching. Money is important but have fun making it so that in the beginning if you are not earning much money yet at least you'll have fun too getting there.
I was going to Alex's green screen digital backgrounds but decided to attend a workshop on using Adobe's OnLocation. The former excited me more but I needed to know how to use OnLocation for monitoring video shoots. Sometimes we do have to set aside inspiration and go for something useful. And that's the way it goes in life too sometimes.
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