March 9, 2007: I’m writing the first day PMA roundup on the second day of our trip here because we’ve been too busy to catch up. But Michael and I are in the pressroom taking a little break, and I wanted to let you know how it’s going.

In a word: Great! We’re having so much fun. Michael and I are the proverbial kids in a candy store here; wide-eyed and wonder-struck, with mouths watering and tongues hanging out. So much cool stuff! So many cool people! And slot machines!

But first, a continuation of my first day’s woes. Those of you who read my previous blog entry (and thanks to all who sent their words of support – and their prayers!) learned that right before the big event of the first half-day, my glasses broke, forcing me to attend the opening meet-and-greets with my glasses held together with scotch tape. Nice one, Scott.

Have you ever been in the situation where you know you look really dorky and wrong but there’s nothing you can do but throw back your shoulders and carry on? That was me, with half my mind saying “just carry yourself with a smile and no one will notice that you’re sporting a look not seen since Revenge of the Nerds, and the other half of me hearing Carrie’s mother from the Stephen King novel shrieking “They’re all going to laugh at you!!!”

In the end, I told myself “no one is even going to notice your glasses” and conducted myself with as much confidence as I could muster. Later that day, I found a Lenscrafters and got myself a new pair.

So, wouldn’t you know that the very first person I met the next day said to me “Oh, I see you got your glasses fixed,” destroying my hope that no one noticed my geekiness? Oh well, dreams die hard.

Also unlucky yesterday was Michael, whose planned 3:30 PM arrival turned into a 1:30 AM ordeal.

But on the first real day of the convention, things are looking great. We had really productive, interesting meetings with tons of folks, including Adobe, Nik Software and Lynda.com.

Adobe told us all about Photoshop Lightroom, a product that’s a little hard to get a handle on but that seems to offer tons of functionality and ease-of-use.

Nik makes some extremely cool Photoshop plug-ins. Michael and I are big fans of Color Efex Pro. We talked about it back in November when we saw it demoed in NY, and we’re still talking about it now.

Lynda.com offers a ton of web-based training for improving your skills on basically any software you can imagine. Here’s some of their newest: Photoshop CS3 Beta One-on-One Preview, Photoshop Lightroom Essential Training, Digital Asset Management for Photographers, PowerPoint 2007 Essential Training, Excel 2007 Essential Training and Outlook 2007 Essential Training. That’s a lot of training! Thank goodness that computers have made our lives easier!

We also played with Zoom Albums, which are a really easy way to make hard-covered mini-albums you print at home and can carry with you or give out as keepsakes. Sweet stuff.

Best of all, all these companies are being good to our listeners – they all will be offering giveaways, discounts and/or extended trials to our listeners. You’ll be hearing about them in the weeks to come.

Not only that, but we had our first in-person judging of a photo contest. Yes, in our next show we’ll finally be announcing the winner of our second photo contest!

The celebrity guest judge is none other than the Dean of the New York Institute of Photography (NYIP) Chuck Delaney. I don’t know that we’ll ever get a nicer, more experienced or more articulate judge than Chuck, who has judged over 500 photo contests in his time.

NYIP is the premier distance learning solution for learning photography. I’m a former student myself! They have a new short course for digital photographers and – get this – Chuck is giving away an enrollment in the next show. So, not only will we be awarding the winner of the photo contest a Wacom Intuous 6×8, but we’ll be giving away a chance to take the NYIP Short Course: Fundamentals of Digital Photography!

Can you say “bling?”

Speaking of bling, have I mentioned that we’re in Vegas, baby??? Here we are with the latest NASA astronaut to go astray.

By the way, as I’m writing this in the press room, I’m sitting next to the incredibly nice and approachable Terry Sullivan, who’s the Lead Analyst for Cameras and Camcorders for PC Magazine. He’s writing to his blog while I write to mine.

Ah, life is good at PMA.

Scott

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 10th, 2007 at 10:43 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.