workflow

As the year comes to an end (or a screeching halt if you are heavily invested in the market) it is time for my annual self assessment of...myself.

This year I feel I have made the most progress in project management. I have blogged previously about various workflow improvements, experiments and systems for managing multiple projects, and/or managing a single project to completion. Rather than looking at these nuances or exingencies of workflow, in this post I will analyze my overall project management philosophy.

Some Background

Over time I have figured out the right way to manage..er..managing, and of course the wrong ways to do the same things. There is, in fact, no definitive right or wrong way but trial and error weeds out the errors.

Anyone else confused?

In project management, as in MS Proect, you have dependent and independent tasks. You've gotta stay organized or there will be gridlock combined with chaos. The goal is organized non-chaos, although chaos often prevails.

Solution to chaos is organization. Some people may use lots of sticky notes while others may use MS Project. I have used MS project and to quote Mr. Horse from the Ren and Stimpy Show, "No sir, I didn't like it." You become a slave to MS Project. I once tried to make a Project file for a client with multiple long time range projects, and it became unweildy quickly. In fact if you look up "unwieldy" in wikipedia, there is a picture of my GANTT chart for this project. Nothing? Tough crowd. Not a fan of the GANTT chart, although if a client sends me one it is usually a sign that the client keeps organized, which is a good thing.

Moving on...Lately I have been using Excel, another MS creation, but one based upon simplicity. You could just as easily use a Word table or a large markerboard. But e-mailing a large markerboard to others really clogs up the server. Plus without the sweet licorice smell of the dry erase markers, it just isn't the same. Mmm, licorice... Excel lets you get as fancy or non-fancy (simple) as you want to, and is easily updated. Thus I am using Excel not for its spreadsheetness, but for its easiness of information dispersal (infomersal?!)

I have experimented with Basecamp, Campfire and other web-based PM tools. But again, you need to keep these updated, which eats into limited time to actually complete project tasks. A project task should not have to include managing the managing of the project. The managing of the project is part of the project itself. You should not have to remember to manage your project - managing the project IS part of the project itself. This IS getting confusing, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to invent some new words. Let me climb into my hover car and get back to my point. Insert Jetson's car noise here "bbbblllllloooooooeeeeeeaaaahhhhhhhoooooooeeeeeeeowww...!"

Now once you have organized your chaos using an assumedly simple yet flexible solution, you need a method to manage your managing. To do lists work for me, usually revised or re-written daily. I have tried using web and MS Office-style methods, but a great new portable technology works the best for me...paper! I re-use misprints from the printer and other scraps of paper that would otherwise go to the dump. My Grandpa Morris used to use the backs of envelopes for note paper, so it is in his memory that I too recycle! He was "going green" when gas was $1.00/gallon.

The to-do list tends to get packed with other last minute tasks, phone numbers, phone messages and the odd drop of mustard or mayo from a sandwich, so I go through a lot of to-do lists. But there is nothing like the satisfaction of crossing out tasks with a pen or the mother of all task completing instruments - the yellow highlighter.

It is also important to set reminder alarms for planned conference calls or time-sensitive tasks. I use my phone's calendar. I stopped wearing a wristwatch years ago, although I do miss the watch outline on my wrist, proving that despite my pale appearance I do get sun exposure. Now if you want to check my Vitamin D intake you need to be married to me. Sorry ladies, I'm spoken for.

So I have a method for organizing and sharing project status, a schedule from important communications and a habit forming way to track my own tasks. Next is the much hyped management philosophy.

• Get stuff done in a timely manner

• Own the project. You can't "sort of manage" a project. It's all or nothing.

• Avoid procrastination

• Practice delayed gratification (anything involving the word gratification sounds good to me!)

• If something is unpleasant to do, do it first. Often these tasks only take an hour or so and don't seem so bad once finished.

• Stay organized.

• Keep up with correspondence. If a paper trail is important to fully understanding or explaining a project, review the sequence of events from time to time.

• Be your own best critic. It is easy to be your own cheerleader. It takes courage ot be critical of oneself - be constructive.

• Finally, take care of yourself - eat, sleep, exercise, floss (seriously, keeps your co-pays under control), laugh, sing, paint, whatever.

I mentioned owning the project. I think this is most important. Even if you are not an expert in the subject matter, you can and should become an expert in the subject matter of the particular project, if only so you can notice things to correct before the client does. In other words, know your content. If you have a book with 300 pages, of course you cannot know the material by heart, but you can have a decent understanding of each chapter and will probably remember one or two important aspects of each chapter, each author and the layout and images. Same goes for a video project. Perhaps you cannot view the video in your head with your eyes closed, but you know all of the key moments in the video (which is why you wake up in the middle of the night humming Acoustic Underscores Track 20 and you start seeing the furniture in your living room as a series of Photoshop layers).

Sometimes in project management, it pays to take the extra time to review something one more time, sometimes in such detail that if you ever have to look at it again you will surely go mad. Such attention to detail may not catch every mistake, but you have done your due diligence as a means to respect the client and the client's money.

So in summary, my project management philosophy is to get stuff done. My way. However my way needs to comply with the company's way, that is, in the interest of the bottom line.

Thanks for reading. I'm gonna go practice infomersalizing.

Mike Cohen

I'd like to say I have been so busy catching up on work that I have not had a chance to write new posts. This is partially true.

Partially, I took a week to visit my folks in insanely sunny Florida, helped my wife through some medical troubles (no, for the last time, I did not film it) and have in fact been pretty busy at work.

Oh, and I discovered I know a lot of people on Facebook.

But back to the important topic of workflow.

As described in excrutiating detail in previous posts, I make the most of to do lists, post-it notes, scraps of paper, e-mails to myself, Excel spreadsheets and various other attempts at self-organization.

I recently completed a project which was an excellent exercise in organization. I will describe it in generic terms, but give some specific example of learning points.

The Documentary/Promo/Movie Trailer to Promote a particular career

Ok, I guess that wasn't too generic. It is an interesting project.

We pitched a casual documentary style approach, using inspirational interview clips and relevant b-roll, good music, and little to no narration.

Once we had cleared the various PR hurdles, we got three great days of shooting at several medical schools and hospitals, including a c-section. I developed a list of questions, and while conducting each 30 minute interview came up with follow-up questions designed to get people to talk about what they do best(which is not talk about what they do best. What they do best is do what they do best.) It is my job as producer to draw out performances, even and especially unscripted candid interviews. We also tried some possibly hokey segments, some of which will never see the light of day!

The next step was to digitize (capture) all of the raw footage, 4 66 minute DVCPRO tapes and about 15 mini-DVCAM tapes. We shot primarily with 2 V1U cameras in DVCAM mode (incidentally, the two cameras did not match as I'd hoped they would) and shot a few interviews with the DVCPRO, although we could have left this at home and saved gas.

After 3 days of digitizing, while doing other work of course, the next phase begins - logging. Rather than logging the tapes before capturing (digitizing) I capture and then log.

Step 1

Take each interview subject and isolate unedited on its own sequence. In some cases we shot an interview with two V1U cameras, with the lenses practically touching, one wide one tighter, to facilitate editorial or time based edits without jump cuts or dissolves. This is a good way to simply edit out long pauses, ums, ahs, coughs, or retakes. But one can also compress a long thought into a short one. Since the V1U has no timecode output, we try to have each interview subject clap their hands, which is an easy way to sync things up. We generally had a lav going into only one camera, so you find the good audio, fill left or fill right, and turn off the track from the other camera.

Step 2

With each person on his or her own sequence (timeline) I next chop up the timeline into topics. In other words, I edit out the sound of me asking a question, so I am left with the person answering the question, with black spaces. I like to do things methodically, so I do this for every sequence, before actually viewing the material in real time.

Before proceeding to the next step, just for some psychological reason, I like to know how much material I actual have to now go through. So I ripple delete the spaces on all the timelines, so I can write a time next to each person's name. My yellow lined paper now looks like this:

Harrison Fjord - 22:00

Barbara Edyen - 7:00

Bruce Willjyis - 4:15 (boring)

Peter Jaquson - 11:15

you get the idea - I can now tell myself, "Self, you have 1hr 33 minutes of interviews to watch."

Not so bad.

Step 3

With everything chopped up, I now go back to actually listen to the material and make notes. On yellow lined paper, I write the person's name and then a few words for each unedited chunk of interview:

Steven Shmeeldurg

1 - why he got into his career - money of course!

2 - met his wife on a project

3 - When he knew this was the career for him - he could produce mediocre work and still get rich

4 - etc

5 - so forth

6 - so on

After this step, I now have a few sheets of lined paper. Now to select my, er, selects. I do this on paper, placing a check mark next to the clips I want to use. I go through each timeline, and just eyeballing the clip number, move the selects to a higher track. With this done for every speaker, I then copy and paste the selects to a new timeline, and watch it all in order. I save this timeline as edit 1.

Now I save as edit 2, and start weeding out the, er, weeds? My goal is as short as possible to get the message across. The goal was stated as between 3 and 20 minutes, whatever works. I wrote on my yellow paper:

Edit 1 - 23:00

Edit 2 - 17:00

Edit 3 - 14:00

As the amount of material is reduced it becomes increasingly more difficult to make cuts. I got to about edit 5 and maybe 7 minutes of really good gems.

The page down - spacebar to play - delete to delete keys makes things a bit easier in this process, although you need to use the mouse anyway.

Now for about three weeks (3 months) I had been brainstorming ideas on how to actually cut this together. The brainstorming started before we actually shot anything, but not knowing if we had a chance to get the kind of material I was envisioning. The plan came together - somebody call Howlin' Mad Murdoch.

With my shortest-humanly-possible-without-losing-some-nice-moments version in front of me, I came up with an editing format I was happy with, and realized I need to add some more time in the form of b-roll, SOT and some more interview segments from a second set of questions. Time rose back to about 15 minutes. Some efficient use of the three camera setup for one SOT sequence and some thoughtful cutting of the interview segments got me down to about 11 minutes. I next added a title sequence and conclusion and hit 12 minutes and change.

I watched this edit (7) another time or two and tweaked some edits on each pass.

Now to add the music and hopefully make it more engaging.

I recently added a bunch of new CDs to my Firstcom contract, so I grabbed a few of the new titles, and found some contemporary sounding music. I decided there should be music under the whole program, including the interviews and SOT segments. Since there is no 12 minute track in the Firstcom library (I know, Sonicfire Pro could do it) I decided to use different tracks based upon the mood of the music and the subject matter being discussed (someone call Steven Shmeeldurg, maybe he can use that technique!). 

Some of the Firstcom discs include just the audio CD, so you need to rip the music. Others include a DVD-ROM of AIF files, including both the full mix and the separate instrument tracks. The separate tracks makes things more fun and you have more control over the mood. This also helps transition from one piece of music to another - you can bring in the drums or piano before the previous song fades out - hopefully this makes it less jarring. But kids these days are used to quick changes, right?

With the music added, I spent a few more hours perfecting the mix, and then time to render out to FLV for web viewing. Oh wait, have to color correct the multiple cameras, right. Premiere has numerous color correction tools, and it took a little while to find the right combination or 3-way color correction, Proc Amp, HSL, Levels and Equalize (not all of those and not the same cobination on all clips). Not bad for a first pass, we can tweak it on the final edit. Remember this is for the firtst edit.

I posted it online before heading home for the evening (incidentally, all of the above took about 4 days of focus.)

Once at home, I watched the full video over my DSL - always a good idea to check out your work via a home computer setup. Although we have cable modem attached to our network at the office, the home DSL experience is a good test.

It looked pretty good, so I e-mailed the client a link.

The next day most of the feedback was very good, a few comments about music choices and some of the interview clips, but these things are very easy to fix. I was also asked for a script. I quickly made a two page Word doc listing the times and brief summary of each sound bite, just so people could refer to this while reviewing. Once we lock things down for the final, a full transcript will be needed for approval. It is a good idea to have a transcriptionist in your rolodex (what's a rolodex?) for these purposes.

I should add that during the final day of editing, I was getting the inexplicable "Sorry, a serious error has occurred, Premiere needs to close." error, usually when doing anything in Premiere involving doing anything with any function. Not good when you are almost done with a project. On a few occasions I lost about 10 minutes of work. It seemed the faster I worked, the less frequent were my manual saves, and Premiere's auto saves were set to 20 minutes.

After a few frustrating incidents, I set auto save to 1 minute intervals - a little annoying, but even with frequent crashes I did not lose too much work. I dealt with this hassle so I could finish the project.

Once the video was online for client viewing, we determined a few things about my computer. First, someone had installed AOL instant messenger without permission - whether or not this was the culprit, it wasn't helping. Next we tested the RAM and that checked out. So next was a reinstall of all Adobe products. This seems to have fixed the problem, although I have still had a few Serious Error crashes, but nothing like before. I'm sure we will figure out the problem eventually.

Thanks for reading.

Mike 

And so my Spring travel season comes to a close. Like the annual monsoons in India, my Spring travel takes me to conferences and various shooting locations, as recounted in previous posts. The only problem with so much travel, is one needs to get into the swing of things to actually cut the videos and move toward project milestones and eventual completion.

I have blogged before about project management, workflow and organization, but I feel it necessary, especially for independent contractors and some of the younger folks who read these blogs to reiterate the importance of being organized.

Getting organized can be easier than staying organized. I tend to change up my methods periodically. Whatever method I use, I follow one maxim: use paper.

Here you can see my current incarnation of brain management - the linear calendar.

I'm not a big fan of the GANTT chart. Perhaps it was the late 90's MS Project experiment that had me spending more time managing the MS Project file than actually completing the tasks which ruined it for me.

So I call this a linear calendar. Rather than using a standard blocky calendar, or any of the online google-type calendars, I like a simple linear representation of about 2 months, all on one sheet of lined paper, with plenty of room to estimate time to dedicate to tasks.

This is an alternative to my usual sticky note lists of tasks to do. Simple lists of tasks are ok unless you have some specific deadlines. The linear method is flexible and shows me where I will have some free time, breathing room or bottlenecks. We will see how this works anyway. Actually getting the work done, regardless of the method, is of course the key goal. Write your tasks on toilet paper if it works for you.

After days and weeks of travelling, collecting spent tapes in my satchel, I am always faced with a week of digitizing. Technically it is capturing, since DV tapes are already digital, but digitizing is the word everyone seems to use.

Here is the importance of having 2 workstations - one for digitizing and one for working in the meantime. For this particular project, I will take a deck home for the weekend, and once every 83 minutes or so I will look up from my latest issue of Creative COW Magazine and change tapes.

Other workflow improvements....

Another workflow improvement I use is pre-labelled blank CD and DVD discs. As pictured here, I use a generic label, making the added Sharpie text look much nicer than it would on a completely blank disc.

Once the editing actually begins, workflow is ever important. In the case of medical topics, we often shoot with 2 or 3 cameras. Setting up my Premiere sequence with the video synced up but visible like so helps expedite the initial edit.

Sometimes multiple PIP setups like this remain in the final edit.

Now, if I could just organize my receipts...

Thanks for reading.

Mike

It's Saturday morning (at least it was when I started this post). Sleeping past 7am can be a real treat. Make a cup of coffee (as much as I like the convenience of highway gas station coffee, making it at home is so much nicer), eat breakfast whenever, and plan out my day.

Now certainly weekend time is valuable and precious, however it is also an opportunity to be productive without working too hard.

Here's my home office setup for the weekend. The morning sunlight casts a comforting glow on my workspace, normally provided by fluorescent lights:

This gives the phrase Capture Window new meaning - it is nice to be able to capture video while looking out the window, reading, eating or catching up on a week of TiVo recordings.

Other exciting tasks for the day include cleaning the kitchen, recycling cans and bottles and trudging out to my local grocery store for leeks and some cheap wine for cooking (forgot them yesterday - so much for saving gas, although I suppose I could ride my bike.)

So how does this fit into Workflow, or the COW in general? In my opinion, anything that increases efficiency, such as digitizing video while wearing my pajamas and watching the latest Dr. Who episode is a desirable workflow improvement. The COW is, after all, about combining the knowledge and experiences of thousands of media professionals for the greater good.

The greater good? What is this a Barack Obama speech? No, what I mean is that our goals as media pros include making our businesses profitable, and if capturing video over the weekend, a task which requires almost no effort, can increase throughput of project work by a modest amount of time, then it is time well spent. After all, the video deck sits idle most weekends and evenings.

Now if there were only a dishwasher that loads and unloads itself - I'm on my second load of the day already...

Thanks for joining me on another lazy Saturday.

Mike

Someone ought to write a book called "I'm a project manager, Now What?!"

Hey, not a bad idea for a book.

Back in 2003 I began the gradual transition from video editor/shooter to project manager. Mind you I do plenty of editing, but depending upon the project I am in fact managing, sometimes more sometimes less. But the particular responsibilities are no less important than the others.

At the time, we had about 3 times as many employees, so I was also a department manager. There was some resentment, such as "can you do my job as the web master? how can you possibly manage me or review my performance if you can't do my job yourself?"

I'm not making this up.

As it turns out, in addition to learning how to evaluate the performance of others, I also had to learn how to fire people, not an easy thing to do.

Given a leaner crew, I could focus less on personnel issues and more on figuring out how to juggle multiple projects and manage a few others, and delegate work to everyone, including to myself.

I have blogged previously about making lists and using the right tools to keep track of a project's process, milestones and deliverables. My favorite tool is a great new application - a calendar! Another tool I use a lot is the yellow sticky note pad - brilliant!

We tried using MS Project and various other free and non-free pieces of software, but in a small organization you can easily devote hours per week just managing the tools you are trying to use to manage your work. Alas, every organization is different and has different needs.

What has worked the best is relative autonomy. Give someone a task and a deadline, and they generally only seek help when absolutely necessary. Everyone, however, has interruptions - many of which are unavoidable - and these lead to missed deadlines. We can all improve in that department.

Project management, thus, includes a heavy dose of time management. Time management is an acquired skill and perhaps the most difficult one to master.

In summary, project management can take many forms. Personnel management, time management, even equipment management all play a role in moving forward toward deadlines. Some deadlines are a day or two, a week or two, a month or two or years in the making. Something useful yet cumbersome about breaking up a project into tasks, either in MS Project or on paper, is that you can fail to see the big picture - or you are so focused on only the major milestones, that you feel like you are not accomplishing anything, while in fact you are working on a 3 month deadline, which is itself made up of perhaps 50 smaller tasks. But these 50 smaller tasks are not and should not be part of a big picture view of anything. This is the beauty of delegation - you can avoid micromanagement as long as you have a capable person working towards the goal - it is assumed the resource will hit each smaller task.

The challenge is when you are the manager and the resource. Time management indeed!

Thanks for slogging through this one!

Mike Cohen

If you're like me you have a million things to do. Oddly, none of those things happen to be writing blogs, but hey, I ticked off 7 items on my to do list today!

As outlined in previous posts, in addition to shooting and editing video projects I also am a project manager.

When I realized that 50% or more of my days were being spent project managing, I did some research on ways to improve efficiency.

For a while I listened to a project management podcast by Cornelius Finchner

http://www.thepmpodcast.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=35

He has some interesting ideas and conversations, however he also spends a lot of time on preparing for the PMI exam and certification, and a lot of things related to being a full time enterprise level project manager.

Having culled all I could from these podcasts, I turned to this great new thing which apparently existed even before the oh so revolutionary Internet: a library!

My local library in Woodbury, CT not only gets a lot of great new books on business subjects, it also has great organized stacks of useful resources. Having flipped through several of the old classic books from Tom Peters and some of the new classics from guys like Jack Welch, I stumbled upon one of the "who moved my cheese" style books, the On Time on Target Manager. This is what I call a 1 hour book, because you can read it in 1 hour or so, and it is written as more of a parable than an actual story.

The simple lesson from this book (skip this paragraph if you do not like spoilers) is the following:

Do things for the right reasons, in the right order, with the right people, and want to do what you do.

Ok you can start reading again if you skipped ahead.

Brilliant, yet simple. Oh sure, it sounds too simple, but when your To Do list resembles a take out restaurant menu, it can be overwhelming to keep your brain focused on the most important tasks.

Long before I read this little gem, I had been making to do lists. However these lists are often just a collection of unfinished, difficult to finish projects, rather than tasks.

Therein lies the difference - differentiate between a project and a task.

For example, here is a fictional Project To Do List:

1. Paint house

2. Clean garage

3. Organize tape library

4. Find the crystal skull

Obviously I will never check off any of these tasks in the short term, especially if this is a daily list. A list like this can be written on a marker board, well out of my line of sight.

A better to do list, let's say for the week, should be:

1. Assess condition of shutters - if they need to be sanded, take down and put in garage.

2. Sweep garage floor. Clean up recycling. Get rid of t-tops from old TransAm.

3. Setup excel file for tape library. Get buy-in from boss and co-workers.

4. Take weekend trip to Chile rainforest, contact local tribesmen, meet long lost son.

See what I mean? Divide and conquer with an overwhelming list makes it less overwhelming.

So lets say this 2nd list is my weekly to do list, then each morning I can make a smaller boiled down list. You may say, I can manage off the less focused list just fine. But in reality, I at least find that my brain can more easily deal with smaller manageable tasks. Plus I get a kick out of crossing out or checking off items with a magic marker. Maybe we really do learn everything we need to know in kindergarten!

Monday

1. Remove shutters from east side of house

2. Move clutter to one side of garage

3. Make a list of fields for the tape database

4. Check last minute airfares to Santiago International Airport. Find bullwhip and leather jacket. Make list of former girlfriends.

So how does this all relate to the price of eggs?

Huh?

I know I talk like an old man!

Let's use a real world example:

Project List

1. Nursing Video - complete 1st edit

2. Whipple video (that is the actual name of an operation, look it up) - 1st edit

3. New Nursing DVD library - prepare for sale

Again, this may be the list of important project milestones, but you can't check off anything on that list after anything less than a few days or weeks of work. We humans need the occasional instant gratification. Hence the popularity of scratch tickets and tiny bottles of booze in hotel rooms (or so I hear).

Let's boil down this list to a week:

1. Nursing video - complete first pass editing raw footage to script, rough titles, intro montage

2. Whipple video - digitize raw footage, edit down to 1 hour or less

3. New Nursing DVD library - make DVD masters, packaging, labels, post-tests, catalog images and website.

Maybe, if nothing else comes up, I can do some of this. Remember, I am combining video production and project management tasks. While I frown upon multi-tasking, if you can set parts of your day aside for different tasks, that may be ok, but it may differ for everyone.

Here is a sample Monday list:

1. Nursing video - edit at least 5 minutes, rough in shots and temp titles.

2. Whipple video - digitize 2 hours of tape, more Tues

3. DVD Library - author 1st 2 titles on DVD, burn master discs - 2 more on Tuesday, pull stills for packages.

Ok, things are looking more manageable.

Some weeks the lists are not so organized. Lately I have been using brightly colored sheets of paper and a Sharpie, but I try different techniques. Oh, also I like pretty colors. And books with lots of pictures!

A neat work environment is certainly a goal. We can dream...!

In summary, if you manage a lot of projects and do some or all of the work on those projects, the key is to find an organizational system that works for you. If MS Project is something your organization uses, I am sorry for you. Actually it can be a good program if you do not micromanage every task, and if you have the time to manage the project files.

If you are lucky enough to have a scheduling person in your group, learn to follow the schedule, and avoid interruptions.

Avoiding interruptions, however, is another blog for another day.

Mike Cohen

Hi. My name is Mike. It has been 3 months since my last blog post.

All: Hi Mike.

I have missed all aspects of the COW. I receive my Business and Marketing forum e-mails, but frankly have had little time to read these, or browse the forums or the blogs.

Well, dammit, I pledge to find the time. Here is a little review of what has happened these past 3 months, and why I have strayed from the COW's fertile pastures.

Ooh, that last sentence may have come from a Mike Huckabee speech!

LOL

Early October 2007

With the looming medical convention in New Orleans I have these key projects to finish:

1. Planning for live surgery event Oct 25. Drive to NY to check out the Florence Henderson Theater. Actually it is the Florence Gould Hall, although sometimes it is referred to as the Elliot Gould Theater. Contract with a prominent video conferencing service for lots of clams as Fred Flintstone would say.

2. Wrap up DVD on colon surgery. A hand drawn flowchart saves the day. Encore 2.0 lets you view the project like a flowchart, however I have never gotten Encore 2.0 to successfully build a project without an error, and in some cases the project file becomes corrupt altogether. So using Encore 1.5, a roadmap is the key to avoiding confusion.

It is at this point that I start wearing a hat to work every day, due to the incongrous patches of baldness thanks to the above project.

Oh well, it was a learning experience.

2. Next project is, get this, a DVD on colon surgery. This one is a bit more complicated, as each of 25 surgeons has his or her own chapter, including a Flash interface, video, narration, illustrations and a companion printed book.

Mid-October - Medical Convention, New Orleans

I had not been to NOLA since 2004. The convention center and tourist district are largely unchanged. During the taxi ride form the airport we see a lot of homes with tarps on the roof, and the French Quarter has many many abandoned homes and businesses.

The Loew's hotel however is quite nice, with one of the nicest indoor pools I have seen in a hotel.

A Few Representative Pics from this trip:

My last day there while walking around the French quarter, I called to check on my grandma Hilda. News is, she isn't going to make it. Her first words upon learning this, "Mike is going to miss talking to me." 36 hours later she was gone.

Over the New Year's holiday I started going through my home video collection, cataloguing all my videos of my Grandma Hilda. I feel so lucky that she permitted me to interview her on camera several times over the past 10 years. I recommend doing this with anyone you care about and will miss when they are gone.

Late October, 2007

Time for our big live surgery event. Four hospitals in NY transmitting live cases to the Florence Griffiths Joyner-Kersee Gould Henderson Hall. I find this funny. Two hospitals had full iSDN connections, two had only marginal IP bandwidth available. The ISDN feeds looked good, the IP not so good. We filled the time with some pre-recorded HD surgery. We rented a Panasonic PT-DW10000U HD projector and some XDCAM decks. Of course playing HD surgery after IP surgery is like viewing the Mona Lisa in person compared to using a ViewMaster. Actually, ViewMasters usually look pretty good, so make up your own metaphor.

The next day we rented out the historic Hudson Theater adjacent to the Millenium Broadway hotel. This day consisted of about 40 PowerPoint lectures, panel discussion and a presentation over ISDN from London (cha-ching$).

I couldn't resist taking this shot:

With this big event over with one could focus on the coming tasks for the rest of the year.

Early December, 2007

Fly to Tampa, FL. I have not been here since 2000. Little has changed, although I never actually visited downtown. While the Courtyard is a nice hotel, it is centrally located in a ghost town. Walking at night just a few blocks to a great cafe was like a Twilight Zone episode. You know, the one where a salesman finds himself alone in a strange town...like every episode! Next day I was to shoot 3 surgeries, however the patients were put to sleep before consenting, so I was stuck with the 3rd case of the day, which turned out to be a bad case to videotape.

Next day fly to Phoenix to shoot 4 new videos. This shoot went great. Word of caution, if someone recommends going to a little town with lots of cute antique shops, run the other way and don't look back. Aside from the dozens of what I would call junk shops, Glendale, AZ actually has a great German beergarden and restaurant called Haus Murphy's which made the trip worthwhile. It was also the winter festival, which was a lot like a New England winter festival without the snow.

Well, here we are in 2008 and looking forward to wrapping up some lingering projects and starting some new ones. Now if I could just shake this cold...ACHOO!