Catalyst 2008 – Together – Day 2 – Dave Ramsey

Going to drop some nuggets of wisdom on the Internet courtesy of the amazing Dave Ramsey who just spoke at Catalyst.

First his leadership message:

• Few churches or organizations experience real unity.

There are 5 main enemies of unity:

1. Poor communication
2. Gossip
3. Unresolved disagreements
4. Lack of shared purpose
5. Sanctioned incompetence

• Poor communication can take many forms, but when the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, strife sets in.
• Gossip is degrading and will destroy a church or organization.
• a successful leader develop-s and maintains a culture in which negatives are handed up and positives are handed down.
• by definition, gossip is when a negative is discussed with anyone who can’t help solve the problem.
• Unresolved disagreements happen when a leader doesn’t know they exist or when that leader avoids confrontation.
• A little confrontation cleanses the wound and allows the parities to go forward in a spirit of unity.
• When you are aware there are hurt feelings and/or disagreements, act quickly and decisively.
• Lack of shared purpose is caused when a a leader doesn’t restate the goal, the vision and mission early and often.
• It has been said that sanctioned incompetence demoralizes.
• Team members will eventually become demotivated when someone else on the team can’t or won’t do their job and a leader will not take action.
• For the sake of unity in the entire group, the leader must go to battles early and often with any of these enemies of unity.
• When unity is valued in the culture, the team will also at to keep these enemies from the gate.
• The only way to penetrate the market place for Christ is extreme excellence

As for his financial advice in these turbulent times:

• Knowledge and perception removes fear.
• Gold hasn’t been used as an on-the-street currency since Roman times.
• Over the history of the last ten 10 year stock market cycles, the market has delivered a 33% increase over pre-crash value.

NAB 2007 Day 3 and 4

Well folks this is the last NAB 2007 update. We went, we conquered, we’re exhausted.

We hit the show first thing yesterday morning and had to wait in line for all of 30 seconds because the doors didn’t open up until 9 AM local and we arrived at 8:59:37 AM. Bogus. Anyway, I hit Panasonic first and talked to them about their AJ-HPX2000, AG-HPX500 and AG-HVX200 I covered the entirety of the lower south hall (Post Production and Display Systems) and some of the uppler South hall (Management & Systems and Acquisition & Production). Ended up with, and this is a rough estimate, between 20 and 1000 pounds of schwag and manufacturer propaganda. My shoulders and arms are tired from carrying that around all day yesterday. I met Stu Maschwitz from The Orphanage, who just happened to write the book I am currently reading: “The DV Rebel’s Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap“. He presented some of the finer points of Adobe After effects and demoed how it was used to make the bank robbery and falling scene from “Superman Returns“.

By the end of the day I had visited Ross, Grass Valley, Analog Way, Adobe, Autodesk, AJA, Boris FX, Element Labs, Sony, Canon, Manfrotto, Porta Brace, Kino Lighting and so many more.

Scott was being a fellow information kleptomaniac by camping out in the Apple booth for all of their Final Cut 2 demos.

We ate lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe and dinner at dinner at Bahama Breeze. Souvenir shopping followed and then a run and gun illegal parking jaunt to watch the fountain show at the Bellagio.

Day 4 included a fast dash to the Apple booth for me to run through the whole set of FC Suite demo, lunch at Cozymel’s and surprisingly short wait in line to get our board pass at McCarran International Airport. Now here I sit, waiting on a flight, talking to a couple of guys I met that work at OETA who were out here for NAB as well. I’m ready to go home. Who knows if I’ll go to the office tomorrow. May work from home.

Until next time.

NAB 2007 Day 2

Well, we shifted our plans today. We didn’t make it to the convention until a 6 PM Apple Enterprise Clients networking shindig. Spent all day shooting video for tomorrow night’s Revolution service. Got some decent shots but as always not enough b-roll. Still trying to burn that into my head. It’s one of my single greatest downfalls as a director/producer/editor. Lessons learned.

Saw the Oakely corporate jet, the famous Las Vegas sign, a guitar that Jimi Hendrix burned on stage, gondolas on the second floor of the Venetian, and what I will assume is America’s closest attempt to paint a Sistine Chapel inspire ceiling. Hitting the show all day tomorrow, and hitting it hard.

NAB 2007 Day 1

NAB 2007 Day 1. WOW! That’s the best word I can come up with for what I experienced today. So much information, so many eye catching, awe inspiring, “How’d you do that?” technologies. My mind is spinning. My feet hurt, my shoulders are tired from carrying around my PowerBook all day long, and I have 2 more days of this. We met up with Evan from Integrated Fusion for lunch and then he followed up with connecting us with the Martin Lighting church rep for dinner. He’s been incredibly helpful with insight regarding the ins and outs of attending NAB. This is his 5th NAB trip so he’s well versed. Met up with our Apple rep and chit chatted about the new Compressor and podcasting and FC Studio 2 and 8 Core Mac Pros and Red 4k and ProRes 422 and….well, you can take it from there. More to come tomorrow.

Live from NAB 2007!

Coming to you live from Sin City, Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m here with Pastor Scott from church for NAB 2007. Apple announced Final Cut Studio 2 today with many new additions and upgrades. Can’t wait to get my hands on it later. Should be ordering a copy later this week. Sitting here in the hotel room at Circus Circus, mapping out vendors to visit over the next few days and refining our purpose for being here. This is going to be an amazing 4 days.

Check out my Flickr for pictures. I’ll be updating throughout the week.

On a much different note I was contracted to video a wedding last night. It was Celtic, the groomsmen and groom were wearing kilts, and a man that appeared to be a catholic priest requested Strong Bad’s Trogdor during the reception. The DJ fulfilled the request. That one simple act elevated that wedding to my list of best weddings ever attended.