Wow. That's the best single word to describe this year's NAB conference going on in Las Vegas.
The numbers are up, the exhibitors are up and, according to at least one encoding company, deals are being made. But it's a different kind of package being presented that's whetting buyer's appetites... if you can put a deal on the table that can skinny the FTE bottom line, people are going to listen. Make that number really shrink, and you've almost certainly got a deal--at any price.
But it's not just trimming personnel budgets that's drawing attendees to vendors booths.
Crowds flowed in and out of Adobe's booth space all day long today; everyone's enamored with Adobe's new CS5 (more on this in FierceOnlineVideo tomorrow) and its workflow concentrations that make everything from cleaning up a file to creating truly dynamic flash presentations so easy a caveman could do it... or at least easy enough that it'll take you fewer people to get the job done (there it is again, workforce reduction).
A huge portion of the space in the south exhibition hall is taken up by companies selling everything from 3D camera rigs to lighting for 3D shoots to TVs that can handle 3D TV to encoders for 3D. There are an awful lot of people wearing everything from the standard cardboard 3D glasses that we children of the '60s recall to glasses that Ray-ban wouldn't be ashamed to offer. And that's the bottom line... 3D and 4K are coming. What are you doing to get ready for it?
I'll have a lot more in the days following NAB. Right now, I'm heading over to get a pair of those funky glasses so I can watch Avatar. -Jim