Ep.2 - NAB - Inside Tips & Advice for Municipal Video Specialists

Michelle: Hey Dana Dana: hey, Michelle. Michelle: Guess what? Dana: What? Tell me all about it. Michelle: NAB It's just like seven weeks away. Dana: NAB, the National Association of Broadcasters event in Las Vegas. Is that the NAB you're talking about? Michelle: That's the NAB I'm talking about. Dana: Last year I thought there was 65, 000 attendees that went. How many are slated to go in 2024? Michelle: Get this, 115, 000 people. Dana: Yeah, it's quite a jump. Michelle: It's pretty big. Dana: Yeah. Michelle: I mean, you know, conferences took a hit these last few years, but I think people are ready. Vegas is fun on top of everything else. Dana: I've heard. I've heard. Yeah. Michelle: Um, I mean, like all conventions, especially these really huge ones that are very international. Things have been a little weird the last few years, but at one time, and I think if they meet their projections this year, it's gonna be true again this is definitely the largest broadcast convention in the U. S. and one of the largest in the world. And it's, I think, the second largest technology convention in Las Vegas, which is huge just next to CES, which I think has a lot more mainstream know how? They talk about that on just the regular news, right? You can hear about CES on CNN, and you don't quite hear about NAB on just the regular mainstream news, but if you work in video, if you work in broadcast, you've probably heard of it. But as we talked about in our first episode of the Government Video Podcast, we're in this weird crossover space. Dana: Yeah. Yeah. We are. Tell us a little more about that intersection that we're in. Michelle: We've got these people who work with video, who probably don't necessarily consider themselves like a production person, right? Or maybe they didn't start out like thinking that they were going to be w orking in video and then they just sort of got handed that because they're in the communications department, there's a budget for it, or they already had the facilities when they got consolidated with another department. So we've got a lot of people that have gear or budgets to work with and don't necessarily know where to go to learn how to make the best use of it or to, you know, add things to make it even better. And that's where NAB comes in. Dana: Well, and that's also where our podcast comes in. Michelle: And where our podcast comes in. Dana: So, here we are developing these different tools, but, so for today, we're going to talk about kind of a, a quick list of pro tips about NAB. Michelle: Yes. Dana: True? Yeah? Michelle: Yes. We are rich with pro tips for you today. I've been to NAB gosh, I'm trying to remember because we skipped a few years. I think my first NAB was 2015. And I had no idea. I had heard, I'd heard about it, from other people, and a lot of it was just like, you'd go to some other conference that I thought was kind of a big deal, you know, and fun, and they'd be like, oh, wait till you go to NAB. Dana: Wait till you go to NAB. Michelle: Yeah. Dana: It's like, it should be on the, like, wait till you go to NAB. Michelle: We built it up so much. Dana: Yeah. Michelle: And I had actually never even been to Vegas before when I went to my first NAB. Dana: Oh, just doing both of those at the same time. You got Vegas and NAB is just like, blows your mind. Michelle: Super fun. And I came from a radio background and there's a lot of like radio nerd things happening at NAB too. It was super fun and I went every year that it happened since then. And when was your first year? Was it last year? Dana: Two years ago. Michelle: Two years ago. Dana: Yeah. Michelle: Yeah. Dana: So, first time going there. You said it was 2015. You walk into the exhibitors, onto the show floor. What went through your mind? What was the visceral reaction that you had to, cause it's hard to put into words. Michelle: Screens. Everywhere. Screens everywhere. And cameras. And I think drones were really starting to take off at that time, too. So, literally people flying cameras around in the room. And people walking around on camera stabilizers as if they were stilts. Just all the gimmicks, all the screens, all the flash, and you're already in Vegas, and Dana: Feels like a broadcast Cirque du Soleil, right? Michelle: That's a good way to put it. Dana: You know, actually, it's from like from the ceilings, from the floors, everything's built and customized for the space. And you're, we're already in one of really visual industry. Michelle: Yep. Dana: And now you're getting all the creative people around it to appeal to more visual people. So you have all of those pieces plus just the technology itself. Michelle: It's such a great way to combine the work that you have to do with fun. To a greater degree than, other conferences and conventions. And not just because it's in Vegas. You know, I think you could take that setup in a convention center anywhere, because it's not like it's on the strip. It's a little bit further off the strip and it's pretty self contained. So if you were staying in a hotel really close to the convention center like we did and you're not a person who's into the strip, you could avoid the strip altogether. And it's kind of its own little micro happening there. Dana: Sure. Yeah. Michelle: Um, it was a lot to take in. What was cool about it was I felt like there was a really great balance of brands that you're super familiar with, and brands that you've never seen before. Dana: Yeah. Michelle: And I think that's so important in this space, because you can go there to look at, say, Adobe products, right? People are really familiar with Premiere, and Photoshop, and Illustrator, and After Effects. But you can also learn about all this other production stuff that you didn't even know exists. And if you're going to find something that's for you. A niche industry, this is where you're going to find it. that's why we go as Cablecast, right? Because there isn't a dedicated convention of this size that gets people from all over the country, from a lot of the, weird crossover spaces that happen to find us. There isn't another place like NAB for that. But there's also a lot of other people that do adjacent TV production things that are also there for government video podcast listeners. Dana: So let's talk about specific offerings. Michelle: Yeah. Dana: So people are planning their trip. They're planning a trip to NAB. Let's cover like exhibit halls, training certifications, conference sessions, networking, and then maybe some fun stuff. What do you think about that? Michelle: Yes. Dana: Yes. Michelle: All of the above. Yes. Dana: So. Exhibit hall pro tips. We, we all need a little bit of that, right? So what are some of your go to pro tips when attending NAB? Michelle: I feel like the pro tips for the exhibit hall, there's a lot of crossover for just pro tips for Vegas in general, which is wear comfy shoes always. That's a must. And drink lots of water. Another one is always make sure that you download the NAB app on your phone, and plan your journey out ahead of time. And that's not just to save time. It's also because if you've never been to the Las Vegas Convention Center before, it's huge. There's many different halls. When I first started going all the halls that were involved were like connected so you could kind of walk You know straight from one into the next and that was convenient and a little easier to navigate. Now They've got this other hall called West Hall that you kind of it's a little bit of a hike to get there you can use The fancy Hyperloop, uh, the Tesla Hyperloop. Dana: Oh, the Tesla loop, yeah. Michelle: To get there. I'm not convinced that it's that much faster, but, um, or you can walk like a skybridge to get over there as well, or you can walk outside if you really want to. It's, the weather is actually usually pretty nice in April. Dana: Yeah, it's not too bad. It's not too hot. Michelle: Yeah. Those are the two big ones, water, comfy shoes. Dana: And comfy shoes, like thick soles, comfy shoes, like flats don't cut it. Michelle: Yeah. So then the planning, getting the app and planning out your journey ahead of time is important because the thing you don't always think about before you get to a big convention like that is bandwidth is so stretched. The internet is crawling. Your phone is basically just like a thing taking up space in your pocket. It doesn't really, it doesn't really make calls. It doesn't really look at social media. It's a camera really. But if you have the app, you have all the locations, you have the map, if you have put the schedule and the locations of the places you want to go in the app, it'll send you notifications, I think one of the best things for a first time NAB person, or a person who is just being handed a video operation, maybe you don't know that much about video right now. What they do is they group different solutions. And They'll find somebody that is an expert in that specific set of solutions, like broadcast or streaming or AI, there's lots of different topics. The one that I went on in the past was for broadcast solutions, and it incorporated some production stuff like lighting, then it also had some remote production stuff like encoders. We talked about closed captioning. We looked at automation, which is like crossover. So the stuff that we do at Cablecast, but you got to, take a tour all around and look at what this tour guide considered the top of each of those categories workflow. And it's just helps you navigate the floor more intentionally, I think, so you might not have time to talk to each of those vendors specifically about your workflow on that tour, but you can kind of bookmark that vendor in your head and maybe come back later and have a longer conversation about your specific needs, or even, set a demo with them after the show as well. Dana: So it sounds like it takes quite a bit of time commitment. Michelle: Not too much, no. Dana: Really. Okay. Michelle: Well, so I guess we should say NAB itself goes from April 13th to 17th this year. The educational content starts on the 13th and the exhibit hall is open April 14th through 17th. So you have three and a half days to see all the vendors. And that's if you want to see all of them, which you probably don't. This tour, I would say, depending on where you're coming from, like we all had to meet in a meeting room that was at the convention center. We got a little bit of an intro before we hit the floor. And then I think the tour itself was maybe two, two and a half hours. Dana: Oh, that's not bad. Michelle: It's going to take like half of one of your exhibit hall days. They're at specific days and times. You don't get to choose that. I think some of them might be offered multiple times throughout the show, but just know that, you know, if you're putting off learning about a vendor until you go on that solutions tour, you might have a limited amount of time to follow up with them afterwards if it was like on the last day. But I just really think it's a great way for first time people or people that are exploring like a brand new workflow, and you don't know that much about it, you can start to you know Learn at least the terms that you need to start Googling even if the vendor that you visit on that tour is not the one you end up going with. Dana: Say somebody wants to take it a step further. We've done solution tours. Is there any like training or certification opportunities or Michelle: Tons! Dana: Oh, there is. Michelle: There's tons, there's so many trainings.. You'll be sick of training. Some of them are free, some of them are paid. Kind of depends on what your budget is. I think a lot of vendors will promote their own little trainings like in their booth or in their suite. Cablecast we're in a suite location. We used to be on the floor, but we actually really like being in a suite because it does help us to do things like have a little user group, and it's not loud and we have internet that works. Dana: And refreshments. Michelle: Yeah. Dana: And a place to sit. Michelle: And a place to sit. Dana: That's a huge thing. There's not a lot of sitting. Michelle: And food. We have a beer fridge. It's great. We've been doing that for a few years and it just, it enables us to host these like special trainings where we demo what's new, but the end users that come can dive deep into their specific workflow needs with our team and it's usually really well attended and I know other vendors do that as well. So if you've got a solution that you're already using and you just don't have that many experts or you yourself want to learn it better, this is a good time to reach out to that vendor if they're coming and see what they're offering. You know, I mentioned Adobe before. There's lots of vendors like that that are doing more official training, like, certifications, and those are, you know, a hundred, two hundred bucks. And then there's some other sort of sub conference tracks that you can do that might run you anywhere between eight hundred and a thousand dollars, like, on streaming or AI or something like that, if you've got that really specific interest and you have that in your budget. Dana: Yeah, and something you can add to your LinkedIn profile and get that added value piece. Michelle: You gotta get it on the LinkedIn or it didn't happen. Dana: Didn't happen. So, what about general info sessions? Michelle: General info sessions Dana: Are they all paid or are there some free opportunities as well? Michelle: Both.. Actually, I think most are free. Dana: Okay. Michelle: There's a lot of guest speakers and those might require more of a premium registration. I should back up, we should have talked about this in our exhibit hall section, but a lot of exhibitors, Cablecast included, will give out a free code for you to get an exhibit hall pass for free. So there are levels to NAB registration, some are paid, but if you're just looking to mainly walk the show floor and do some of the other complimentary events that are all listed in the NAB app, then you can usually just get a code from one of those vendors and, you know. that way you can get in for free, that's where you really unlock the lowest cost experience. Dana: Sure. Yeah. Michelle: And it'll list all the speakers, all the trainings, all the solutions tours that I mentioned before, the after hours events, like happy hours and parties, all of that is listed in the app, and it'll tell you immediately whether or not, it's free or has a cost to it. Dana: We should talk a little bit about networking and parties. Michelle: Right. Dana: Because we're in Vegas. Michelle: You're in Vegas, it's a great time to like let loose and meet people, if not in your industry because you're in, you know a smaller niche space, you can still meet a lot of cool people at NAB and NAB sets up fun events for you to do that specifically. So some of these things happen on the show floor, again that's all listed in the app, and some of these things happen out and about in Vegas. Last year, it was 2023, it was the 100 year anniversary of NAB, and they did a lot of big stuff. They had a giant party at the Omnia nightclub at Caesars, they had like other happy hours on the Strip, and all of that was listed in the app, and I believe It was free, I mean it wasn't like open bar. Dana: You have to register though. Michelle: You have to register. Dana: So make sure that you register, the app will tell you how to do it, but they will tell you no if you don't register. Michelle: Yes, and they fill up. Dana: Yeah. Michelle: Yeah, some of them have limited access, so if you are looking to party, you need to look at those early and RSVP early. Dana: The monorail is a great way to, to travel. Up and down the Strip. It's affordable instead of taking Ubers everywhere. Right? Michelle: Yes. Highly recommend taking the monorail. If you're staying on the Strip, usually there's a better hotel rate over there. And then you can just train over to the convention center. And then you have, you know, a really convenient way to get back to the Strip at night. Dana: Cablecast will be having a suite, and Michelle, where's our suite gonna be? Michelle: We will be, well you, I won't be there, sadly, this year. You will find Dana at the Renaissance Hotel, which is right next to the Convention Center, right next to the entrance to South Hall, and we will have all those details for you if you register. We will actually be sharing our code with our podcast listeners, if you want that exhibit hall pass that we mentioned before. And then we'll have all the details on how to find us and even our meeting booking page if you want to talk to us about your broadcast automation and streaming needs. Dana: Anytime you want to learn about our newest features coming out, the good thing about NAB too is we have two engineers, our head of engineering will be there, Ray Tiley. As well as some additional engineers and our new customer success director, Jake Buckley will be in attendance. So it'll be a great opportunity to meet him and our new West Coast regional sales representative as well. So it's a great. Michelle: It's all there. Dana: Great opportunity to meet everybody and to just talk about your individual needs, book a meeting with us so we can, get to know your system a little better and be able to help you out on different challenges you may be experiencing in this video world. Michelle: And to tell us your ideas for our future podcast episodes. Dana: Oh yeah, we'll have a notebook. We'll be there. Michelle: All right. That's it. You heard it here first. All of our NAB pro tips. So we hope to see you in Las Vegas. But if you miss it, we will be bringing you all the updates, everything we shared in a future episode here on the Government Video Podcast. Stay tuned.