As the title says, NAB was a B E A S T this year! The toughest training schedule I have ever had, by far. All of my class attendees were great! They were all very relaxed and jovial and we had a good time discussing 100 different topics in the Adobe CS3 Production Premium suite. As the week went on they could tell I was starting to wear down and they would bring me peanut butter crackers or a cookie or an energy bar or a bottle of water and they would say things like, “You can do it!” (with Cajun accent - Adam Sandler movie line reference) and “I know you’ve got another one in ya!”. It was all very positive and uplifting and I appreciate every single person that came up to offer an encouraging word.

The NAB Conf and Expo had 105,259 registered attendees this year. I actually kept a little worksheet/journal with me at all times to keep me on schedule and to track how I was spending my time. Here’s how the week broke down for me.

I did:

• 24 hours and 15 minutes of classroom training in both the NAB conferences and on the show floor.
• 4 hours and 30 minutes of answering questions and providing free consulting services outside of class time.
• 28 hours of preparation and practice time between classes.
• 4 hours and 21 minutes of sleep (on average) across 7 nights.
• 8 hours commuting between the hotel and the Las Vegas Convention Center (and that’s fast compared to most people’s experiences)
• 2 hours and 20 minutes commuting between my classes on the show floor and those in the North Hall conference center.
• and only 2 hours looking at exhibits in the Expo (this makes me want to cry!)

Besides all of the wonderful attendees, I’ve got to thank my good buddy Richard Harrington for sharing the training experience with me along with some of his files to make my classes even better. Rich is one of the best trainers in the business and is absolutely selfless when it comes to sharing of himself with others.

I also have to thank one of my best friends of the last 20 years and current DVPA President Benjamin Weeks for being such a Godsend on the most stressful days. Benjie (as he’s known to his close friends) brought me lunch on days I didn’t have time to eat, took me to dinner on my birthday (which always falls during NAB), even trekked with me off-strip (to the scary parts of Vegas) looking for affordable drinks and munchies I could stock up on in my hotel room. There’s no one I’d rather do NAB with than him.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be posting numerous items related to NAB (video clips, class notes, project files, additional tutorials, things you might have missed, etc). Scroll on down to the post below to get notes from my Photoshop CS3 Extended for Video class.