A Barking Dog

As I planned to make my way back east for AES I’d hoped to see the usual characters,  The Duke, Brain, Maggie and Cabbie.  I was pleasantly surprised to see Plisskin.  I’d heard he was dead.  I’m not too keen to travel by air these days.  It’s a royal pain in the ass.  Besides, I’ve had my share.  Flying coach on a commercial carrier is what I think the modern day equivalent of crossing the Atlantic in the Nina, Pinta or Santa Maria.  Except for the scurvy.  We now have N1H1.  Earlier this year my former pilot Ted got his gig back at what may possibly be the worst airline in the US sky right now necessitating the need to find someone else to wing me to the Big Apple.  I found a new wing man. This one from New Jersey.  Sorry, I don’t know what exit.  I hear nearly everything with a french, opps, sorry Quebious accent these days.  I believe his name was Chet Bleau.  The flight was pleasant enough, non stop at least and employed the well honed American parenting technique of giving you some junk food and cable TV and hoping you don’t bother anyone for the next few hours.  One thing I’ve never liked about flying into the city so nice they named it twice are the airports.  Calling JFK a rundown, third world lufthaven is an insult.  To rundown, third world lufthavens.  It’s seems that someone has ponied up some cash and at least T5 has been brought up to modern standards.  Spacious gate lounges, reasonable food and free wifi.  Cool, welcome to the new millineum guys.

The key for me this year was to hit the show, give the presentation and see the town while spending as little cash as possible.  It seems that was the general consensus with both attendees and exhibitors.  Spend as little money as possible.  It’s no secret the last year has been hard on most in the biz.  I’ve been pretty fortunate here though Vegas has been well hammered.  Boom town in the desert turned to ghost town.  Nowhere was the current economic state demonstrated better than on the show floor with the absence of what used to be many events and parties surround the convention.  Several industry stalwarts, while in attendance, didn’t choose to exhibit.  I suppose when it costs as much to ship a truck full of exhibits 3000 miles than it does to get those exhibits from the loading dock to the booth, exhibitors are going to cut back.  If nothing else out of necessity.  There were a steady stream of attendees the two days I attended and the booth staffs seemed very eager to earn your business.  I hesitate to use the word desperation because the overall tone of the show while cautious was still able to display a passion and enthusiasm for the craft.

I’ll leave the product picks out as these days I attend these events more to meet old friends and colleagues (and many of us are old these days) and to share my experience on the panel.  I probably wouldn’t go at all if not for that.  I’m not really keen on buring miles of shoe leather on endless booths of doodads, most of which I’m not interested in anyway.  I liked the smaller booth/show floor format though missed the demo rooms.  This begs the question, how long is the current model sustainable given a weak economy?  With the cancellation of Mix Live from LDI, the downsizing of AES and the consolidation of NSCA and InfoCom, how much room is there in this climate for a specific pro audio show?  There is more to AES than just the show. The exhibits were small and quality and the information sessions, workshops and papers were as good or better than anything in the industry but something has to pay the bills.  Particularly in the high end room like Javits and an expensive city like New York.

What can be done?  Hell if I know but I hope so.  Perhaps a healing economy will do the trick.  I do know that AES offers something that the other shows don’t.  A voice to advance our industry technologically on a very high level.  The other shows, while encompassing a training regime, do not offer the sort of high level engineering discourse that has been the hallmark of AES since the beginning.  Being able to sell the latest widgets and have great parties are one thing and is needed.  However, should something happen that fundimentally changes how AES is presented we stand to lose something more than just a trade show.    We stand to lose the soul of a great technical community.

See you at the show next year…