viva las vegas.

Every time I think of that cheesy jingle, I think of the more annoyingly cheesy "Viva Viagra" commercial.

Anyhoo.

So last week Kyle & I spent a wonderful, busy week together in warm & sunny Las Vegas, along with about 100,000 other people who were there for the same reason: the NAB Show. We were educated through speakers and sessions and amazed by ground-breaking technologies and innovative & creative visionaries. Okay, not visionaries exactly, I was just trying to throw some big words in there.

My favorites were Anthony Zuiker (creator of CSI series), Stu Maschwitz (a VFX guru & filmmaker), and the faces behind JibJab and Ask a Ninja (okay, not literally the ninja, that would have been awesome). Many other panelists and speakers had insightful things to say and got my mind gears turning - I have pages and pages of notes from all of the sessions I attended. I felt as if I were in school again, and it wasn't a bad feeling. I felt actively engaged while listening to speakers from my line of work - both refreshing and humbling.

The exhibitions were a blur. I have so much content to sort through, it's unreal. The FCPUG SuperMeet was great, although we didn't win anything at its insanely awesome raffle. The RED demo reel showcased by its team was...jaw dropping. I'm really excited about Final Cut Server and the endless workflow possibilities it can bring the company I work for. But, to quote a testimonial from a video I saw last week, "Workflow automation is only as good as the people who follow it to a T."

Here's the thing...workflow automation, efficient productivity, organization - these are my fortes. Of course I'm nowhere near perfect, but I have this weird side of me that loves it when things follow a pattern. I don't like having to use a desktop search program for trying to find stuff when I should know where they are in the first place.

Case in point: whenever I'm away from my computer, and there's an emergency where someone needs to edit a project I'm working on or work from my computer, it's easy for me to walk them through what they need to do because I always set up my projects the same way. Kudos to Cliff, who helped me become an advocate of tidy assets management. =)

Oh, and before I forget, NAB used a sound byte from a short interview that Kyle & I did after we walked out of a session last Tuesday. Click here, then click on Tuesday's Show Highlights in the iNABPlayer. Kyle's sound byte is at about 1:07. Heh. Proof that we were there. =)

And here's an abridged version of the gazillion pictures of Las Vegas eye candy we took.

There are a few more thoughts about Las Vegas in general that I'd like to post about, but for now, I'm going to call it a night. I only got a little bit of sleep last night, and I really don't want to be crazy in the morning. =)