Macworld 2010 San Francisco

I had a blast at Macworld 2010. I love the city. Its a lot of fun to be there. I attended users conference classes all three days. On the first day I went to the Best of session and the Kevin Smith lecture (stand up?) Kevin was funny, sweat profusely, and used a tremendous amount of profanity the whole time.

I really enjoyed the video focus classes especially. I liked the course on green screen, I think the instructor's name is Jeff Foster and he is out of the Santa Barbara area in southern CA. Apparently he has a book coming out on the subject in about 5 weeks. I am planning on buying a copy of that. I believe he said there was a discount for ordering a copy from his website pixelpainter. He was selling some dvds that I bought. I haven't watched them yet.

On Friday I attended most of the video courses. I went to the "Your life in High Definition" with Patrick Nugent. He was very entertaining. He also mentioned in addition to his companie's product "Toast 10."

In the afternoon I went to the "Stereo 3D Animation with Adobe Photoshop & AfterEffects CS4" class with Jeff Foster, the same guy who taught the other course on green screen. He is a good instructor, really knowledgable and good at handling a room full of people with varying levels of understanding.

Later, I attended the "From storyboard to completion" session with Angie Taylor. I think this was the most comprehensive course. She covered everything from how to foster ideas to dealing with the client and the subsequent meetings. Her voice was a little bit soft and the gain should have been turned up a notch. After that class I went into the course for educators and it was really just a very beginner's level so I left that one to attend the 'sharing & publishing your video content' which was much more informative and interesting. The instructor's name is Brian Gary and he said he was with Ripple. I know Ripple but he was new to me. I really enjoyed his presentation style and I hope he comes back next year.

The show floor was a meager shadow of its former self. Most of the big players and vendors were missing. The attendees were there. At least Shure and Blue were there. It took me only two hours to explore the whole thing. It used to take me four days. I did buy some shirts and won an offical MacWorld 2010 sweatshirt by wearing my Macworld 2010 tee shirt. By the end of the day on Saturday many of the tee shirts were reduced in price to just 10$.

We bought a copy of Art Rage3 Pro. Its a neat little piece of software. We bought it online and the show price was just $80. It would have been less but we decided to get the hard copy on dvd rather than just a download. We never know when we might need to reload everything.

We stayed out in Pacifica at the Holiday Inn Express because we like it there. It is about a 20 minute drive into the city but at home we normally have an hour commute so for us it was perfect. They have really nice staff, a view of the ocean, and free continental breakfast. Can't beat a deal like that plus the free parking. Awesome!

Ok, that covers the show. I would go back again. I hope they have the classes again. I can understand why the vendors aren't coming anymore. Its tremendously expensive.