Back from NAB

Well, I almost feel recovered from NAB. It was a week that was as outstanding as it was exhausting–the Adobe booth was packed until just before the end of the show (when the whole floor was empty as all the folks attending tried to beat the rush to the airport) and the overall response was overwhelming. This is the first time I’ve experienced launching a product before a big trade show and in a way it was pretty liberating. Normally, we’re working up until the last minute polishing what we’re going to show and trying to make sure that the whole thing stays secret. Then, when we start talking we have a big rush of folks trying to see what we announced and we have the big job of showing what we’ve done (and convincing everyone what we did matters).

This time, the word had already been out for three months and we have plenty of people out there who have already gotten their hands on the products, or at least read all the reviews and commentary. So instead of us having to stand up on stage (or at demo stations) and spend all our energy just letting people know what the top 10 features were, we spent the whole week talking about the whole solution and what it would mean to everyone’s work. People were there to see it in action before making their final decisions and came with their well thought-out questions around their own work. They didn’t need to be convinced–they had already read the reviews–they just needed to kick the tires. It was a blast.

Outside the Adobe booth there was plenty of cool stuff to see. The talk of the show for the video guys was the Red digital cinema camera. They had it cloaked in a big (red) tent and just let a few people in at a time to see it (and I was told they didn’t actually have a camera in there after all that). Still, the promise of interchangeable parts and relatively accessible pricing for such high resolution footage could be pretty revolutionary. If it ever ships–I’m always a little skeptical of “real soon now” products. On the plus side it was designed by Oakley so it looks like something the Terminator would carry.

Unfortunately, I snapped a lot of cool stuff using my Treo as a sort of visual notepad so I could relate them here, but I had to reset it over the weekend (for unrelated reasons) and I lost all my pictures! As such, I’ve shamelessly stolen this picture from Bob:

Which shows our booth in setup mode on Saturday. Anyway, it was great to meet so many of you that have been reading the blog, as well as all the other folks who came through the booth and maybe are just now checking it out. Putting faces to names is always a lot of fun.

There have been a few other gadgets and announcements to hit lately, and I’m hoping to get to them in the next day or two. Stay tuned.