Viva Las Veags

Next Tuesday I’m going to Las Vegas for the National Association of Broadcasters and Broadcast Educators Association convention. When most people hear “Las Vegas,” they immediately launch into either a squeal of delight or some other affirmation. To which I usually say, “Save it, I hate Las Vegas.”

If NAB or BEA were held in any other city I’d be happy. I don’t gamble. I’m a happily married, middle-aged family man. I don’t do that “other” Las Vegas stuff. And the shows, while I might find one that appeals to me, not sure if you’ve seen this or not but, the ticket prices for those shows are expennnnnsive!

But all that said, I am really looking forward to this trip because I’ll be on a pretty neat shopping trip. I’m going to see the equipment I hope to acquire for Orange Television that will launch us into high-definition television production and deployment. This is a pretty big deal.

Television as we know it has been produced on a 4 by 3 screen since its invention. The move to digital has been slow and steady but only for the last few years. Now, we’re changing to a 16 by 9 format with a huge increase in picture quality through high-definition and going completely digital. I’m also going to be looking at going “tapeless.” What that means is that all production will be acquired, edited and sent out via hard drives or other solid-state technology. Much the same way that VHS tapes were replaced by DVD (and now Blue-Ray), videotape is being replaced by hard drives. This is a seismic shift in television.

The other neat part of this trip is the back end; the Broadcast Educators Association convention will be at the end of the week. BEA is Thursday, Friday and Saturday and each day will be filled with papers, panel discussions on topics of interest for those of us who are in the academic field of broadcasting. It’s also a good chance for me to see what other schools are doing and how we can improve ourselves here at Syracuse. I’m on a panel discussion myself on Saturday morning. I always learn something new and interesting at BEA.

I won’t blog next week but when I get back I’ll fill you in on the details, what I learned and maybe what I’ve decided.

Wish me luck ;)

Think Time

I haven’t been very consistent with my blog this semester. Blogging is on my calendar to do every Friday morning but sometimes, things get in the way.
I like to blog because it forces me to step back and think about things. Thinking time is vastly underrated. We Americans are kind of programmed to keep moving and accomplish tasks so just sitting and thinking is frowned upon. It shouldn’t be.

I do some of my best thinking when I travel because I’m not in a place (work or home) where I can accomplish tasks. Unfortunately I haven’t traveled much lately so I’m down on my thinking time. And I guess I should clarify what “kind” of thinking time I mean.

We all think about stuff. “Gotta clean the garage, pick up the prescriptions at the drug store, fix the gas grill, etc.” That’s pretty normal.

The kind of thinking I haven’t had much time to do lately is bigger picture stuff especially here at OTN. I’m trying to gather a lot of information about high definition television so I can move OTN to producing and deploying high definition content. While that might sound simple, it’s not, especially for a non-techie like me. I really have to buckle down and wrap my head around codec’s, bit rates, file management and workflow, budgets, physical layouts of how this gets positioned here in the office to name just a few things.

And you know, we are constantly being asked to divert our attention somewhere that robs us of that think time. I delete between 350 and 400 emails every week. A lot of them are junk but many require me to respond. That’s a lot of email.

If it sounds like I’m complaining, I guess I am. I like think time. I want think time. I have to get better at making think time a priority. I also like blogging and I apologize for not being more consistent this semester. I promise to do better.