Marc Benioff interviews Eric Schmidt

72 hours onsite in 5 days; split shift crews over the week; massive set change 2 days before show; 8 cameras, 2 jibs; Metallica. Must be Dreamforce! The Salesforce.com show at Moscone Convention Center has a reputation for  last minute changes and the costs be damned! Lolipop thrust off the stage required more than the usual number of cameras: 3 long-lens at 3,6 & 9 o’clock; a jib near the stage and one in the back of the house; wireless handheld camera and a couple of robo-cams. Rarely have so many worked so hard; Jack Morton Worldwide and VideoApplications kept the ship sailing.

1st trip out of the country in 2011 was Directing for Creative Technology at the SIBOS conference in Toronto. Most challenging part of the job was clearing customs and hoping the reams of paperwork that allow foreigners to work in Canada were in order.

Video Village at SIBOS Conference Room

Our video setup included 5 robo-cams surrounding a boxing-ring style stage with raked seating for 200. Lots of discussions by business, financial and technology leaders – I found the mobile banking segments most interesting.

Off to the desert of Arizona for Google’s Zeitgeist. One of those TED-like conferences where Google and their Partners come together to hear leading thinkers of our time. One comes away from these talks feeling better knowing there are people out there striving to make the word a better place.

Maria Bartiromo interviews Sir Richard Branson at Zeitgeist

Produced by Group X, speakers & performers over the two days included: Eric Schmidt, Robert Reich, Sandra Day O’Connor,  Dean Ornish, Gilberto Gill & Son, Sal Masekela, Jane McGonigal, Tony Hawk, Sir Richard Branson, Cindy McCain, Ted Koppel & Arianna Huffington (click here to watch video), Celine & Fabien Cousteau, Chelsea Clinton, Tim O’Reilly, Ray Kurzweil, Deepak Chopra and Mark Cuban. Pretty impressive line-up!

Oracle Open World and Pay Pal X conferences leveraged the 1st half of October.

The 2nd half was my 2nd trip out of the country: Citrix Synergy & Summit shows in Barcelona. Half of my excellent video crew was from France, the other local. As the camera ops spoke very little English and I, no Catalan, I directed the show in Español.

Barcelona Video Crew on Citirx

The north coast part of town, where the convention center is located, was totally redeveloped for the 1992 Olympics. One evening I went to the other side of town – with a couple of my French crew (and 90,000 fans) – to see a futbol match between the Host city and Seville at Camp Nou stadium. A great treat to see the top FC in the world. At the end of the show, my wife joined me for a mini vacation. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work in this great city!

November went from coast to coast. An executive conference in Pebble Beach for Harris Creative and a Cisco event, produced by InVision in Miami Beach.

Much of the rest of the year was spent on the 27″ iMac, editing Optimal Life a series hosted by Dr. Christine Lee. Last year saw the release of The Essentials of Diabetes and The Essentials of Breast cancer. In 2012 we’ll finish a Spanish version of Diabetes plus the next Series: The Essentials of Asthma. Anyone you know who is dealing with these conditions should watch these videos.

2011 was a strong year, I feel very fortunate to be connected to so many talented production companies, producers and video staging companies. 2012 looks to continue on that path. Let it roll!!!

Finished editing the trailer for “From The Crew” with producer Doug Murray. Hope to get the series on the air this decade!!!

What followed was quite a busy fall and some exciting baseball!

Early September, back at Moscone Center for Oracle Open World,  San Francisco’s largest convention - produced by InVision Communications.

Video Crew on Citrix Berlin

End of September into October was the Citrix Summit & Synergy shows in Berlin. Did a similar show in SF last May (as mentioned in an earlier blog ). Video crew came from the UK and were a pleasure to work with (pictured on left).

The Giants clinched the division angainst San Diego – but as the game was on at 2:30AM Berlin time, I got the news at breakfast the next morning.

Had one day to tour downtown Berlin – a city of almost 4 million people.  Did the tourist thing on a bus and saw most of the usual sites (Bundestag, Brandenburg Gates, Berlin Tower & The Wall (or what’s left of it – quite a bit, actually).

Always amazed at how easy it is to get around on the train in Europe.  Going to cost billions now to upgrade rail service in California – Hi Speed Rail and SMART (in Marin County) have an uphill battle.

Back in the USA the following week on a Google Sales meeting for Group X - Confidentiality agreement in place – can’t say a thing! In between sessions the crew huddled backstage to watch the Giants take the Atlanta Braves in the divisional playoffs!

I started shooting a video series for American Health Care in the middle of October.  The ongoing  web videos will serve to help their  patients control their diabetes while living their lives to their fullest.

Schwab Town Hall, Chicago

It’s still October and I’m off to Chicago for a Schwab Town Hall Meeting:  Bumpy Road Ahead; Please Invest Carefully, produced by TenCue. Live webcast took place in the original flagship of the Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue. If you want to watch some insightful conversation, click the photo on the left to watch the webcast.

Not too many Giants fans in the Chicago hotel bar as I watched San Francisco beat up on the Phillies!  Got home in time to see them win the Pennant!  Maybe I’ll get to watch the World Series at home…

Wait, no, there’s a PayPal show in San Francisco for Creative Technology. I can recall watching many playoff games over the years while working backstage – obviously the shows are booked way before anyone knows whos going to be in the game.  Fortuitously, the PayPal show ended the day the World Series started!

After a great weekend of Baseball, it’s down to Silicon Valley for the Google Global Sales Conference, once again with Group X.  One thing I will say about the show is that Google puts great effort into it’s search engine to make it work as seamlessly as it does. Try misspelling a word when you do a search – you’ll most likely see the “did you mean this?” suggestion. Lot’s of amazing coding goes into getting you the results you are looking for.

Yeah Giants!

Of course the World Series is in full swing and once again I’m backstage in a small room, rehearsing and watching base ball on my laptop during breaks. Rehearsal ends, I’m driving to my hotel, it’s the 8th inning of game 6 and  I’m looking for any bar or restaurant that has the game on.  I’m somewhere in downtown Mountain View and spy a plasma in a restaurant with the game on. Make it for the bottom of the 8th and watch something I’ve been waiting for all my life with a group of people I’ve never met before. I’ll remember that night the rest of my life!

My wife and daughter went to the Parade a couple of days later – while I watched backstage on my laptop.

Camera ops Anne Lakota and Paul Peralta review video with me on PayPal

November continued with some very creative productions: VISA show at the tony Inn at Spanish Bay for Harris Creative;  Audio Visual Technics‘ production for  Novartis at their spectacular office building in Emeryville and the  Safeway Foundation’s annual Gala and Fundraiser with Huey Lewis and the News, produced by DaVinci Fusion.  Ended work for the month at one of my favorite hotels: The Arizona Biltmore. Known as the “Jewell of the West”, its design is influenced by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Ironically the weather was about the same as in San Francisco as we collaborated on the InVison produced show for Cisco.

Thanksgiving is over and 2010 is approaching it’s end.  December starts with technically challenging and beautifully designed shows: InVision for Oracle and Group X for Google.  Seems like the theme for a lot of the shows in 2010 was cram as much equipment as you can in a small backstage and try and stay out of the way of the projection image.

The year finally came to an end with Stage II’s production of the Adobe Global Sales conference held at the Aria hotel at City Center in Las Vegas. This hotel had the most hi-tech bells and whistles of any hotel in which I’ve ever stayed. Touch screen displays at your bedside to open drapes, turn on lights, AC, TV or set an alarm. My favorite button is the “goodnight” icon.

Lights out, TV off, drapes close, goodnight.  And Happy New Year!

Google has two conference rooms, one in their cafeteria (great food by the way) and a smaller one – where we did the Chrome launch. Both rooms have 4 robotic cameras: JVC Hi-Def with two Kahunas in one and Sony cams & Panasonic switchers in the other. One switcher controls the webcast and the other is a screen switcher.

Always a challenge directing robocams – especially in the system with one camera controller. For the larger productions, I usually add a handheld to the system that has two camera controllers.

In a couple of weeks I will be directing the media (video cameras, tape & graphics) for the Google Zeitgeist event. More on that to come…