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Cutting Video
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Since I couldn't sleep when I came home from San Diego the other night, I stayed up and captured some footage from our 2004 INETA User Group Leader Summit. Today I've been doing some editing and encoding the footage to a Windows Media streamed format. I thoroughly enjoy this stuff. It's a real blast once you get into it. I use Adobe products to get the job done and I am NO expert at digital video, but I can do basic editing, transitioning, and DVD creation. I learn something new all the time while working with the software.
So far today, I've finished the Infrastructure Committee update, given by committee chair Devin Rader. I've also finished the Marketing Committee update, given by committee co-chairs Sara Faatz and Dave Totzke.
Although I have a P4, 2.8 Ghz with (2) 120 GB SATA Drives and 1 GB of memory, I am realizing that for heavy duty editing, I could still use at least another GB of memory. Anyone want to donate some and send it my way? :)
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A little Photography on the side.....
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One of my best friends has been doing Photography on the side now for about a year. He recently went and rented a studio for a half day to do a shoot. HE turned out some fantastic work! I know he is proud, and he should be. He has also started a “PhotoBlog” that he is posting a pic of the day to.
Check him out: http://www.pbase.com/kevinriggs/
-Eric.
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Remnants of San Diego......
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On my last day in San Diego, I had the opportunity to hang out with Jay Miller, who is one of our INETA Liaisons for some states in the Great Lakes region. He and I grabbed a bite to eat, and then we walked towards the water. There we discovered that the boat from the movie “Master and Commander” was in port. The “Star of India” was a site to see. Here are a couple of pics I grabbed along the way.
And here are a couple of shots taken this morning as I was leaving from San Diego. Did I mention that I HATE flying? I think I left my stomach in San Diego............hey ..........isn't that a song by some punk band?
-Eric.
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I'm finally home!
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I don't get on a plane for quite some time, I'll be very happy about it. Have I mentioned that I DON'T enjoy flying. On the short leg of the flight from Atlanta to Chattanooga, the person next to me asked me if I didn't like to fly. He said it was very obvious. I'm a land lover, what can I say?
I came back from TechEd with 8 tapes of video footage. It's going to take a little while to get it all captured. I'm going to get started tonight to get the ball rolling. I'm going to capture and edit the highlights from our User Group Leader Summit at TechEd, and then encode it to streaming format for the INETA web site. Hopefully this will available by the end of next week. We'll see if I can get it done that fast.
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The King of SWAG!
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How on earth will I get this stuff home?? User groups LOVE good swag at meetings. So I have made sure to try and hook my people up while I'm here. The vendors here at TechEd have been fabulous about giving me a few extra shirts or other goodies to bring home and give out as prizes at our user group meetings. It was also great to get to meet some of our book publisher friends face to face. I met Joan from Addison-Wesley, Chloe from APress and Jennifer from Wrox. They were all generous and gave me a little something to bring back for my user group as well. Here is the PILE of stuff I need to get home. Luckily I only brought one suitcase of clothes, along with an empty Nike gym bag for the return trip home. I'll see how much of this stuff I can cram in the gym bag. Anything else might get shipped home via UPS.
Roughly: 50 T-Shirts, 19 Hats, and 30 Decks of playing cards(minus 2 that we'll hold out just for Andy V) are somewhere in the picture above. (The little orange things in the middle are containers of Microsoft Office lip balm. SPF-15. Awesome!)The Exhibit Vendors at TechEd have been fantastic!!
Tonight is the big party for all TechEd attendees at SeaWorld. The buses will be pulling out soon. I better get ready. The main entertainment lined up tonight is Jessica Simpson. It should be a good time for all.
-Eric.
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Recapping More TechEd....
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Tuesday we had a big lunch with most of our User Group Relations Committee. This consisted of all of our Liaisons that represent North America. We discussed the current and expanding role of a Liaison, and future plans for our committee. It was a good time and it was nice to get our UGR Committee together. I was able to put faces with the voices of our conference calls.
Yesterday I was able to shoot some footage with Rocky Lhotka for the DVD I'm working on. I'm excited about the project, and I can't wait to home and capture all of the great footage I'm collecting. Today, I'll be wrapping up the last of the video footage with our Marketing Committee chairs. Sara Faatz and Dave Totzke will be giving us the low down on the INETA Marketing Committee and how they work within INETA as well as how they help our member user groups.
-Eric.
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Please pass the Advil.....
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Last night was the party for influencers. The invitees were made up of MVP's, Regional Directors, a bunch of INETA folks, and our friends from Microsoft. The party was held at a place named “Dicks Last Resort”. I had a fabulous time waking around just talking to everyone. It also became clear to me that my skills at playing pool have not increased at all over the last few years. I managed to successfully lose 2 games in a row. My skillz are weak!
Just for laughs I turned on “Redneck Mode” and had a few people rolling with a rendition of Redneck Star Wars that an old fraternity brother of mine used to do back in the day. Come on!! You know it's funny! Could you just imagine Han Solo and Chewie putting bondo on the Millenium Falcon?
Okay......enough about that.....
-Eric.
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This is Awesome!!
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A Java community guy was invited to our INETA User Group leader summit that was held on Sunday. Check out what he had to say about us and our efforts. It makes me feel even better about being a part of our strong organization. Go read his blog post! You'll love it!
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More things going on at TechEd
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Today was a busy day at TechEd. We had a meeting of our User Group Relations Strategic Committee at lunch. Tomorrow we'll be having a lunch of the full UG Relations Committee. I'm really looking forward to getting all of the liaisons together. It should be a good time for all. I managed to get some time to walk around the Exhibit Hall today. I managed to pick up some good swag that I can give away to my user group members at our next meeting. I'm going to need to get a box and send this stuff home via UPS or FedEx. When I first approached some booths, people just look at me like I'm just there to leech a free T-Shirt or whatever. But once I mentioned my user group and the user groups in the states that I represent, some folks were eager to play nice and give me some stuff to take back home. Go ME!
I got to talk to Jeff Prosise for a little bit near the end of the day. He and I will be hooking up tomorrow at 3:00 so we can shoot some footage for the INETA Resource DVD that I'm working on. I taped a bunch of great footage at the INETA user group leader summit for the Resource kit as well. I'll be taping our marketing committee chairs at some point during the week to complete my INETA footage. At the end of day, I was pretty worn out. INETA funny man and marketing dude, Dave Totzke and I walked to Wendy's to grab a bite.
Here are some more pictures from TechEd:
Hallway
Map
Stairs
View from front of Convention Center
View from back of Convention Center
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Day 1 of TechEd over - Highs and Lows
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The User Group Leader Summit was awesome! We had a fantastic time, and I was able to meet many fellow INETA volunteers that I hadn't met before. Our partners at Microsoft have some wonderful things planned for our User Groups in the next year. Dave Noderer was bestowed the “Volunteer of the Year” award for INETA. The Summit was a great success. Here is a group picture taken just after the fantastic lunch we were served.
| MEDIUM PIC | X-LARGE PIC |
The day moved downhill from there. I went back to the hotel to discover that my MVP backpack that I received from Microsoft had been stolen from my room. They took my backpack, PDA, and my travel bag that carried my toothbrush, electric razor, etc. etc. I was not a happy camper at that point. I spent the next hour and half off and on dealing with Hotel security while they tried to see what happened. But in the end, my stuff is gone. After dealing with that situation, I had to rush to the Convention Center for a Birds of a Feather Session that I was leading. When I finally found the room, I discovered that someone had screwed up the numbering assignments, and my room was filled with a lab of computers for people who want to take MS Cert tests. CONFUSION!! So I hung around outside the room until about 15 minutes past the scheduled start time. No one showed up. Either that or they were confused when they peeked in the room only to find a lab and not a meeting room. Regardless, I decided to walk back to the hotel.
I caught up to everyone else and we all walked to another hotel for a party up in the Senators Suite. NIIIIIIICE!! A couple of hours later, I was all chilled out and having a good time. And that's as much as I'm going to say about that. :)
All in all, I miss my wife and daughter. Too bad they couldn't be here with me. There was a little girl that sat behind me on the flight out. She kept reminding me of my own “rotten baby girl”. I miss her, and I'm sure she misses her “Dada”.
