| | EXHAUSTION, HAPPINESS, GRATITUDE
This has been by far our biggest trade show ever in terms of crowd size and revenue. We had a triple booth and a separate staging area to the right of it, and we still had crowd control issues. This year we actually put up barricades to help control the crowd spillover. I finally got the stinking Canon WIFI to work (it wasn't the Canon's fault, it was totally Aperture... Aperture is nuts how it doesn't work!) As soon as I switched to Photoshop Bridge, I got it to demo on the 30" screen, and that was fantastic.
I am completely exhausted - but also super energetic at the same time.
I am still writing the catalog description of the WT on the cart, and it was totally great research for me to demo the product and take questions and answers directly from people face-to-face. This helps me understand what gets y'all excited, so I can distill that message in meeting with our ad agencies, etc. We've got so many retailer orders to fill, and I understand that B&H and Adorama already have it on their e-stores, so our factory has been working literally 20 hours a day the last week trying to fill our initial orders.
 I'd like to give a few instant thank-you's for some of my heroes. Many, many of you were at Bob Davis's standing/sitting/hanging-onto-chandelier room only crowd and were enthralled by his seminar. Bob helped me do the WT instructional video, showing us his mastery at using multiple lights for effect. I never knew the insane amount of talent and knowledge he has.
I honestly think Bob can/should become the biggest thing in this industry... I mean I knew he and his wife Dawn were awesome people and two of our dearest friends. And we saw the beautiful album they did for Oprah's "Legends" Ball. But one thing Bob never did was he never tried to "pitch" me. We became friends first, then I saw his amazing talent in not only his shotmaking but how incredible he is at teaching. I really hope he puts some of his infectious energy into teaching/seminars/educational materials, because he is the best teacher I've seen since Dean Collins. That's how good he is.
 Many of you saw Calvin Hayes running around shooting images for WPPI/Rangefinder with his Whaletail. Calvin is such a beautiful, inspirational person and such a phenomenal photographer. If you know Calvin and Bob, you know the type of person I really admire. Positive energy, joie de vivre, their lives can be described as a smile. This is the first time I've seen Calvin since his kidney transplant, and I am so thankful that he is so healthy and in my life. He freaking loves his Whaletail. I agree with him. I love mine too.
We had the most awesome team at the booth this year. This is the first year we actually had "shifts" so we could relieve our friends at the booth. And I do mean our friends, because what we like to do is work with our friends. What's also hilarious is if you follow this blog, you probably know the folks at the booth. I'd hear little conversations being started in line like people are old friends, yet this is the first time they'd met. "But we know each other through our blogs!"
Tracy Kumono and Elle Tabatabai were our booth chiefs. I am so grateful for Tracy. She totally got us up and running on booth ops,  and Elle took on the responsibility for the booth being on-time and under budget :) It has been the smoothest, most organized booth with four lines of order takers taking orders much faster than last year. Our goal was Indy-pit stop fast transaction times because having a mob at the crowd creates a spectacle and gets us in trouble with show management. This year was record-setting revenue. I'm going to have a special thanks for our booth team in a group photo at the end of the show. Tracy keeps ducking from photos, but seated on the right is our hero Elle.
Everybody here met Elle for the first time and they all just love her. She's new to the industry and with her knowledge of nine languages, except for French, we've got Europe covered! What makes her so awesome is that she gets so much done, never stresses and completely is happy taking on more. It takes a lot for me to say, here, I trust you with the booth. It's your project. And she landed the plane on-time, under budget and smoothly.
Everybody also really likes Don. I have to get a photo of Don. He's in charge of our personal security and if you've seen me going around he's the armed secret service looking guy in the background. But he's not like most security people I know who just stand all day looking creepy. It was hilarious he was standing off in his regular observation position, but he was freaking answering questions about the Whaletail. I said, Don- that's hilarious that you're telling people how it works, and he said, "it's not like I haven't heard the presentation a thousand times".
PBS was also here interviewing me for a national television broadcast for high tech tools and gadgets. I'll have a video clip of that later. And I think I mentioned my two-book deal, one book is tentatively called, "20/20 Foresight" and the other book will be an autobiography - that one comes right after.
We're getting our gear ready for the last day of the show, but before I sign in again, I want to show you some cool images Bob Davis did using two Whaletail Reporters, and simply sliding in the red/green/blue gel filters in the filter drawer in the background strobe:
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| | Posted 3/28/2007 4:29 AM - 300 views - 19 comments
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