by Terrence Young

Saturday was a slow conference day. The rooms were not as crowded as before but the sessions were still excellent.

“Going Paperless,” led by Katie Floyd, was about reducing paper document archives through scanning and digitizing. Do you realize the space you could liberate if you didn’t have to store all those receipts, statements, tax returns, and utility bills? With a good scanner, a little effort, plus a good document management plan, you could really clear a lot of the clutter out of your office or closet.

“FaceTime and Video Chat” was led by Tidbits editor Glenn Fleishman. Video chat and conferencing have come a long way in the last couple of years, and while the technology is still evolving, its usefulness is becoming apparent to more and more people, especially to families who can use FaceTime so easily — with simply a phone call.

Both Katie and Glenn frequently use video chat to communicate with their audiences and they were very enthusiastic about the prospect of sharing their expertise with HMAUS, via video chat, just like Joe Kissell did at Mactoberfest.

We met some really smart, interesting, inventive people this week, and we’re making connections!

Thanks to HMAUS for making it possible for me and Ron Albu to have this stimulating experience.

One last circuit around the trade show floor…

And all the macadamia nuts are gone!

Bye Bye Macworld

For the woman who has everything

“We are still going strong.”

by Terrence Young

Now that we know our way around the Big City a little better, we can spend more time focusing on connecting with other conference participants. For example, first thing this morning, just as we entered the main hall, we spotted an unmistakable face — it was Lynda Weinman, the founder of the super online tutorial website Lynda.com. We immediately seized the opportunity to introduce ourselves and couldn’t refrain from extending our praises for the wonderful training service that is Lynda.com. (If you haven’t tried the extensive catalog of tutorials on the site, you simply don’t know how much information you are missing.) Lynda was accompanied by one of her best (and to date my personal favorite) trainers, Garrick Chow. It certainly was a great way to start the day.

The morning gained further momentum with the first session — How to Publish Your Video Creations — led by prolific digital media author Richard Harrington (RHED Pixel). It was an intense hour learning about how to prepare video for distribution to an online audience. Compression, bit rate, interlace, de-interlace, sample, aspect ratio, FLV, H.264, MPEG-4; it’s complex to be sure, but video is where it’s going to be. “Get wit da program!”

Geekettes

The bulk of the rest of the day was spent scouting the trade-show floor checking out the extraordinary booth-babes … I mean products … as well as drumming up vendor interest in donating products to HMAUS for future giveaways.

A very smart white board

There are some very interesting products being promoted. One item that was particularly attractive was the Smart whiteboard. Maybe you’ve seen it? The technology has been around for over twenty years but has evolved to … take my word for it, it is amazing! If it weren’t so expensive ($6500+) it would be a great tool for HMAUS to have for making presentations. So what is it?! Think more-than-advanced multi-touch whiteboard … sorry, you have to see it to appreciate it.

Macworld Expo is certainly no CES, but on the other hand, all the products on exhibit are real-world, useful and available now. Hopefully, the generosity of the vendors we’ve met will allow HMAUS to give some of the great stuff away … at Mac Springfest perhaps?

So whaddya think of the view from my hotel?

Wish you were here!

Terrence Young

PS.  Ran into Guy Kawasaki;  plus invited Adam and Tonya Engst to visit us sometime.  Tonya has the idea of gathering all the authors for a retreat on Hawaii … interesting idea, yes?

by Ron Albu

Terrence and I attended a standing room only Super Session presented by Christopher Breen and Ben Long providing in depth information about the iPad, with lots of tips and tricks and information about apps and accessories. We also presented these two Mac nuts with chocolate mac nuts from Hawaii and invited them to present for us if they visit Hawaii.

Christopher Breen has visited the user group on the island of Hawaii and told us that he hopes to come to Hawaii again this year. Ben also said that he would present for us either in person or virtually. Both of these Macworld stars are very knowledgable and personable presenters who are very popular with Mac users.

We also went to another session about using the iPad for presentations and got to talk to Les Posen some more about coming to Hawaii. He said that there is a good chance he could come to Hawaii this summer and he would love to work with us on doing some projects in Hawaii.

We also got to spend some time on the expo floor visiting vendors and spreading some aloha by giving out more mac nuts to the Mac nut vendors. They scanned our Expo passes into their data bases and showed great interest in sending us some of their products for door prizes at our events. The floor was crowded with Mac users exploring all of the great new products and software for Apple fans. There are so many vendors that it will take days to visit all of the booths.

The day ended with a sold out Mac User Group Reunion. The MUG Board was so successful in getting donations that their door prize awards often consisted of two or three items because they had collected so much material from donors. Everybody in the room won something and some people won more than one item. We were also pleased to see Guy Kawasaki who donated some of his books, including a new one that will soon be out.

Guy Kawasaki graciously posed for pictures with many of the MUG members in attendance. Terrence worked to encourage some of the writers to have a retreat in Hawaii which would provide even more opportunities for our members to benefit from meeting with these knowledgable Apple stars.

It really is a great experience to be among so many people who share our passion for the all the new technology and how it is changing our world.

Aloha,
Ron