Re: NAB: Adobe, Avid and Autodesk (FCPX too)

My experience was a bit different.

One used to have trouble even finding a place to stand and watch the Apple demos - and just their live demo area was usually far larger than Adobe's entire booth this year. The Adobe booth for 2012 was only about a quarter the size of BlackMagic, a bit smaller than Autodesk, and smaller than AJA. Which I suppose reveals the relative profitability of hardware over software? Hard to say.

Were attendees well interested in Adobe? Heck yes. That was obvious. But it's impossible to compare booth interest by crowd size because too many variables are in play.

Unlike AVID, Adobe's position made them less of a "destination" visit. AVID was upstairs adjacent to Ericcson and Harmonic, Inc. Adobe was close to the big buzz at BlackMagic, where the setup was much more "Apple-esque" up to and including the "big wall" setup where the public face of the booth fronted for a pretty large "behind the scenes" layout. They were also directly across from both RED and Autodesk - making the area itself a core destination for most show goers.

My actual props for Booth Fu must go to the folks at GoPro. They were far "down hall" but by cleverly using a "sign up on our wall mounted iPads to get a $100 discount on a GoPro Hero 2- strategy - they virtually graranteed that there would be long lines snaking into their booth constantly. Well played! (The fact that they could have simply scanned badges in a 10th of a second like everyone else and got the same data likely didn't escape them.) Smart folks!

NAB is such a monster sales game it's truly a joy to watch all these pro players at work.

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