Las Vegas: For me, the defining moment of the NAB2000 Convergence Marketplace came as I rode a minivan cab down the familiar route from my hotel to the Las Vegas Convention Center, one of two locales in the desert oasis for the annual National Association of Broadcasters technology trade show.

My conversation with the driver, a well-traveled and amiable fellow, revealed that while his days were spent cruising around ‘the strip,’ at night he would moonlight as a website designer.

This was further proof that there is just no escaping so-called new media – everyone and his cab driver is leaping headfirst into the cyber-gold rush. The question is, can the market sustain all these players and wannabes? The fragile state of technology stocks in recent weeks reflects this uncertainty.

The show floors seemed endless at the lvcc and at the Sands Expo Center, a complex which once boasted a hotel where Sinatra and the Rat Pack took centre stage, but which for the dates of April 10-13 was inhabited by a far less cool bunch – tech exhibitors, journalists and buyers, the latter two groups looking to determine which of the former are genuinely blazing trails, and which are just blowing smoke.

nab can be a daunting experience. For the journalist, a ‘one-on-one’ interview is often really a ‘one-on-four,’ as you are sat in a small room off the show floor opposite a publicist, a marketing guru, an animator, and a vp of some kind.

The vp and marketing rep deliver a well-rehearsed pitch about their company and product/solution, rife with such phrases as ‘one production method, multiformat distribution’; ‘increasing productivity and cutting cost’; ‘streamlining workflow’; and most commonly, ‘Web ready.’

The true heroes of NAB2000 were those animators/computer engineers whose job it was to tear through complete demos of their software in time for the next appointment in the journalistic conveyor belt. Each animator I met rose to this task without fail.

Canuck contingent

Software companies with Canadian offices including Alias|Wavefront, Softimage, Discreet and Toon Boom Technologies were present in full force. Toon Boom showed how they are working to facilitate production methods previously slowed down by geography. If an ad agency in New York hires an animation house in Toronto, it is now possible to send work-in-progress back-and-forth over the Web for almost instantaneous feedback, instead of losing a day while a copy is mailed.

‘Convergence’ is what they call this marketplace, and this fusion of various media, particularly with the Internet, was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. There was certainly much of interest to see – too much, in fact.

San Francisco company burst.com displayed some of the best streaming video I have seen delivered over the Web. I tried to relocate their booth after one quick pass, returning to the exact spot where I remembered them to be, but, as though in a whiff of smoke, they had vanished. I have since checked their eponymous website, and yes, they do exist, and no, I did not suffer a heat-induced episode of dementia.

I beheld another surreal sight after Day One – many people walking around the Convention Center on the limp. For a moment I thought I had erroneously arrived at a War Veterans’ Convention, but soon realized that these unfortunate souls (soles?) had equipped themselves with improper footwear for the amount of walking involved.

High-def warriors

As expected, Sony made big news at the show, announcing the sale of 100 of its revolutionary HDW-F900 camcorders. These high-definition cameras are the first that can record at the same 24 frames per second capture rate as motion picture film cameras, opening the door to more widespread digital movie-making. The manufacturer also confirmed that producer/director George Lucas will be using the camcorders for image origination on his forthcoming Star Wars 2 production.

The Panasonic booth was situated overlooking Sony’s, in what looked like a standoff of corporate giants. The crystal-clear high-definition monitors Panasonic displayed whetted the appetite for an acceleration of the digital tv changeover, which is currently mired in negotiation among manufacturers, broadcasters, and regulators.

As of now, Canada plans to switch to digital from today’s analog signal 18 months to two years after all u.s. tv stations are scheduled to do so in 2006. Once consumers combine these 16:9 wide-screen sets with their dvd players, it is sure to take even more business away from the local multiplex.

After a day of pounding and sometimes tripping over the show’s carpeted floor, the Canuck contingent could converge at the Canadian Suite at the Flamingo Hilton hotel. The room was packed to the rafters each night, providing a perfect opportunity to meet face-to-face with biz types who may work two blocks away from your office back home but whom you’ve never met.

The head of one Toronto post and animation house related that his goal at nab was to do a little further investigating before purchasing an Inferno visual effects system from Discreet. Another confided that he – and this is rare – had come to Vegas looking for peace of mind. He wanted to ensure the system he had already committed his dollars to was the right one. Turns out it was.

nab attendees on the whole articulated their belief that exhibitors were better this year at delivering on the promises made at the previous convention, perhaps indicating a more realistic understanding on the part of developers as to how far along the technology has come, and how long it will take to reach the next level.

And on an unrelated note, I would like to close with the best example of Las Vegas excess I encountered. The interior ceilings of the new Venetian and Paris hotels are painted to recreate blue European skies, with a few clouds thrown in as well. When you approach a maitre d’ at one of the hotels’ entirely indoor restaurants, they ask, ‘Would you prefer to sit inside, or out on the patio?’