Tag Archives: NAB

Why we’re done exhibiting at NAB

Partially due to NAB management but ultimately because of the expense.

You would think NAB would WANT to keep long time exhibitors around. Smaller trade shows are mostly gone and NAB is sort of the last significant one standing in the US. The value of exhibiting at tradeshows has been questionable for a long time. Attendance is down more than a third (2019: 93K, 2024: 61K) Why get confrontational with your long time exhibitors? You’re really going to look at our 21 year history at the event and go ‘meh’?

But that’s what NAB did. (more details below)  It forced us to stop and consider what the value of doing the show really is and why we do it. I think we were doing it, in part, because ‘that’s what we always do’. And this forced us to actually look at the numbers and reconsider. The reality is the cost of a booth and related expenses are no longer worth it for us, especially since most of the people we talk to are existing customers.

So now they have two less exhibitors at a time when, for both technological and economic reasons, I think it’s likely they’re going to be struggling to increase the number of exhibitors in the coming years. I’ll still be at the show doing some meetings and, you know, having drinks, but we’re done having a booth. Carla is on a GalNGears panel as well.

There’s still value in the show for doing meetings and, I’m sure for some companies, i.e. hardware companies, there’s a positive ROI. But what we’ve seen over the years is that for small-medium sized software companies, the value is questionable. That’s why the Plugin Pavilion ceased to exist.

We first exhibited at NAB in 2001 and in 2003 I started the Plugin Pavilion, which was kind of a collective of plugin companies that joined together to get a larger space. Instead of a bunch of scattered 10x10s, we had a 20×30 space. NAB was supportive of this and encouraged it.

I think the last pavilion was in 2014 as most smaller software companies just weren’t seeing any ROI on exhibiting. However, Digital Anarchy and Revision Effects continued exhibiting together as we had since 2003. Because we’d been exhibiting so long, we’d get a decent booth space. This made the show marginally worth doing. We even exhibited in the post-pandemic years, which seemed to be appreciated by the NAB folks.

Things changed last year. Despite exhibiting together for 20 years, NAB management was suddenly ‘you can’t exhibit together’. What? To make matters worse, they refused to acknowledge that Revision Effects had exhibited those years… Every year you exhibit you get ‘points’ and these determine your booth location. By a quirk of accounting, since I ran the Plugin Pavilion, Digital Anarchy had all the points. The correct and fair thing to do would’ve been to split the points or recalculate the points for both companies. Especially since NAB itself encouraged the Plugin Pavilion. But no. So Revision got screwed and neither of us exhibited this year (2025). (Revision is showing some stuff in the Dell booth but neither of us have a booth)

There hasn’t been a positive ROI on exhibiting at NAB for at least a decade (for us). There are some soft metrics like having a space to do meetings and whatnot that made it worth it to us, particularly since we’d get a booth close to the front of the hall with at least some traffic. So we kept doing it, partially out of a sense of tradition as much as anything else. Even now it feels weird to say we’re not exhibiting. We’ve been doing it for a long, long time. But a 10×10, with all the expenses, runs about $12-15K. It’s just not worth it, especially if the booth is in the back of the hall or something.

So we’re moving on. As mentioned, I’ll be walking around the show. There is still value in NAB as a meeting place. But when you add up all the costs for exhibiting, booths are increasingly looking anachronistic.

NAB And The Coronavirus, Covid-19

This was originally posted in the Digital Anarchy newsletter, but thought it was worth reposting. One change regarding my rant below about NAB organizers… they’ve removed the bizarre claim that free registrations somehow are a proxy for attendance, BUT have now replaced it with a stat that 96% of exhibitors will be there. This is total spin and BS. Exhibitors don’t get a refund if they cancel, so they have little incentive to tell NAB they aren’t coming. For example, Digital Anarchy is probably not going, but we haven’t ‘cancelled’. There’s an outside chance we’ll send a couple people but it’s not likely. But there’s no benefit in tell NAB we’re not going. We just haven’t shipped anything or paid for any booth expenses (carpet, electricity, etc.). So, no, 96% of the exhibitors will not be at the show.

Original post:

With Adobe, Avid, AJA, Ross Video and others cancelling their presence at NAB, I think the writing is on the wall. Especially with virus cases continuing to rise exponentially (300+ on Friday, 600+ on Monday).

However, for those of you looking for a bit more info, here are the results from the NAB/Covid-19 survey I posted last week. We got about 200 responses, so it’s not a huge sample of NAB’s 90000 attendees, but should give you some insight on how folks are feeling about it. Keep in mind the vast majority of these responses came before Adobe announced their decision. (and our newsletter has a lot of Adobe users, so that might have changed some people from ‘on the fence’ to ‘No’.)

Judging from the survey, it appears attendance would be down by 25% or more. Of the folks that were still on the fence, 60% cited ‘Significant number of Exhibitors cancelling’ as a reason they’d choose not to go. So the additional cancellation announcements are a big deal.

Here’s a summary of the survey responses, so you can read what you want into the data:
NAB/Covid-19 Survey Results

Here are the comments from the ‘any other thoughts’ question. It’s interesting to see what folks think about the virus, why they aren’t or are going, and how important NAB is to them.
Respondants Comments on NAB/Covid-19

Some notes about the survey itself:

– If someone answered ‘No’ to ‘were you going to NAB before Covid-19’, then they were thanked and the survey ended. I was mostly concerned with the opinion of folks that were planning on going to the show.
– I didn’t think to include the ‘Country’ field until after sending the newsletter out. So only about of a third of respondants answered. It’s mostly US based and I’m guessing that applies to the survey overall.
– For the ‘Travel’ question, I didn’t consider folks that were driving. But it’s notable that 67% of respondants had not booked a flight. Flights are usually non-refundable, so it’s a commitment. If you book a hotel through NAB, you can cancel until 3 days before the show with no penalty… so it’s not really a commitment.

Some comments on the comments.

Why do I take issue with the way NAB is handling this? Because they’ve done almost nothing other than announce they’ll have extra hand sanitizer. What they have not done:

– Explain to exhibitors proactively what the cancellation process is and what happens if NAB cancels.
– They have not provided any guidance about what metrics they’re looking at and what would have to happen for them to cancel the show. It’s been nothing but ‘the show’s on!’ and ‘look, registrations are the same as always!’. You know, because everyone that signs up for a free exhibits pass is definitely going to show up. It’s not a good proxy for attendance. Just look at the survey results.
– They have not made any concessions to exhibitors (or attendees) that don’t want to attend due to health reasons. Despite NAB’s encouragement to not come if you’re sick… it’s just lip service. If you don’t show up, you still pay for your exhibit space. No partial refund, nothing. So exhibitors have an economic incentive to show up sick or not.

There’s an overreaction to the virus: Possibly, to some degree, but it’s not just about you. It’s true, you might be fine but who will you potentially give it to? It appears to be quite lethal to folks over 60 or people with otherwise compromised health. It’s probably good that the media has been warning about it, otherwise the numbers would be far worse than they are.

What NAB means to us: It’s clear that for many people, NAB is more about people than seeing new, shiny things. So if there are less people, it really eliminates a lot of incentive to go. So much of NAB is sitting in a grungy bar with a client or friend. That’s the heart of the show. (and seriously, does anyone really think Vegas has found God and suddenly discovered cleanliness? The phrase ‘lipstick on a pig’ comes to mind with all the talk of extra hand sanitizer.)

What To Do

At this point I think NAB should cancel. The number of virus cases are growing exponentially. Exhibitors are pulling out. Attendance is going to be down (despite NAB staff apparently being in denial), and the more exhibitors that pull out, the lower attendance is going to be.

Admittedly, it’s not quite as clear of a case as SXSW, where the whole point of the show is to go see bands in packed clubs/bars. However, a large portion of the value of NAB is the after hours parties and gatherings. Taking a quick walk around the tradeshow floor, doing a meeting or two and then quarantining yourself in your hotel room is hardly an experience worth the travel costs in most cases.

With Adobe pulling out, it’s likely we will not go. The main value of doing the show is talking to customers at the booth and the after hours events. If few people are at the show, that seriously diminishes both those activities. I can do meetings via Zoom, I don’t need to go to the show for that. It’s still possible we’ll send a couple people for the first three days… but it’s looking less and less likely. However, we’ll still have the NAB promotions going (watch this newsletter for show specials on Transcriptive, Flicker Free and more) and probably do some webinars for the stuff we were going to announce at the show. Stay tuned…

4K Showdown! New MacPro vs One Nvidia GTX 980

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For NAB this year we finally bought into the 4K hype and decided to have one of our demo screens be a 4K model, showing off Beauty Box Video and Flicker Free in glorious 4K.

NAB Booth Beauty Box Video and Flicker Free in 4k
The Digital Anarchy NAB Booth

So we bought a 55” 4K Sony TV to do the honors. We quickly realized if we wanted to use it for doing live demos we would need a 4K monitor as well. (We could have just shown the demo reel on it) For live demos you need to mirror the computer monitor onto the TV. An HD monitor upscaled on the 4K TV looked awful, so a 4K monitor it was (we got a Samsung 28″, gorgeous monitor).

Our plan was to use our Mac Pro for this demo station. We wanted to show off the plugins in Adobe’s AE/Premiere apps and Apple’s Final Cut Pro. Certainly our $4000 middle of the line Mac Pro with two AMD D500s could drive two 4K screens. Right?

We were a bit dismayed to discover that it would drive the screens at the cost of slowing the machine down to unusable. Not good.

For running Beauty Box in GPU accelerated mode, our new favorite video card for GPU performance is Nvidia’s GTX 980. The price/performance ratio is just amazing. So we figured we’d plug the two 4K screens into our generic $900 Costco PC that had the GTX 980 in it and see what kind of performance we’d get out of it.

Not only did the 980 drive the monitors, it still ran Beauty Box Video in real time within Premiere Pro. F’ing amazing for a $550 video card.

The GTX 980 single handedly knocked out the Mac Pro and two AMD D500s. Apple should be embarrassed.

I will note, that for rendering and using the apps, the Mac Pro is about on par with the $900 PC + 980. I still would expect more performance from Apple’s $4000 machine but at least it’s not an embarrassment.

The mecca of NAB.

Our software company, Digital Anarchy, makes an annual mecca to NAB, which is the National Association of Broadcasters convention. The show is held in Las Vegas in late April, when it’s wonderful to stand outside at 2pm in the beating sun, then run back into the over-air conditioned show to dry off the small beads of sweat.

This was the first year since 2001 that Digital Anarchy was not a vendor at NAB. We sold our video/animation product line in August 2008 and are a Photoshop-only developer now. But we love the event and people, and it’s always cool to see new technology, so there we were. Drinking a little more than working, for once, often with colleagues from other plugin companies.

Representing below: Folks from ReVision FX, Digi Effects, Automatic Duck, Grid Iron, and Digital Anarchy.

050209-nabcrew1

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