Videographer Education - Series Finale

Sixth Trip: Cleveland

After so many flights in such a short period of time, I decided to drive to Cleveland. In part, airfares were ridiculous for the return flight, since it was just before Thanksgiving. In part, driving meant that I could pick my son up from college on the return trip, since his break was starting.

The drive to Cleveland was pretty uneventful. The highlight probably was passing the marker denoting the highest point on Interstate 80 east of the Mississippi River, which was something like 2200 feet. Considering the time I’d recently spent in the Rockies, that marker left me pretty unimpressed.

Without a doubt, one of my favorite features of this local association outreach was the opportunity to see old friends again. One of my old friends, Rommie Sebo, was serving as President of NOVA, the Northern Ohio Videographers Association. It was in that role that he took me out to a very nice dinner the night I arrived in Cleveland. And in the small world that exists in our trade, Michael Wolkis, who was kind enough to host me in Phoenix, has some connections to the deli where Rommie took me for lunch the following day.

“Do the Math” was the requested topic in Cleveland. Like many cities in the Northeast and Midwest, Cleveland has some economic challenges. Having a context for pricing and business issues was thought to be a valuable asset for NOVA members. And, like in every city where this program was hosted, the final results (where we calculate the true cost of producing one wedding video) were astounding.

The drive home from Cleveland gave me the first opportunity to buy gas for under $2.00/gallon in quite a while. And the trip through northwestern Pennsylvania also gave me the first taste of snow for the winter. Otherwise, I took the time to have lunch in State College (home of Penn State, my alma mater) before stopping to pick up my son at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.

Seventh Trip: Orange County, CA and Jacksonville, FL

My final trip for 2005 made for an interesting triangle across the country, flying from Philadelphia to Los Angeles to Jacksonville and back to Philadelphia. For the first time on this outreach, both Tim and I were presenting programs on the same date. The PVN invited us to present all four of our programs in one day, and we were happy to be able to accommodate them.

We arrived two days prior to the meeting, with Tim connecting with family that night, leaving me time to catch up on some email. While we had discussed catching the USC-UCLA football game that Saturday, we spent the day on the road, conducting interviews for The 4EVER Group podcast series.

Our first stop on Saturday was the home of Julie and Alex Hill, which was located to the east of the mountains in Riverside County. The drive itself was beautiful, and the Hills’ live in a very modern subdivision. We conducted the interview in their den, before we all went out to lunch.

When those of us from the east think about California wineries, we think about the Napa Valley. We never knew about the wineries in southern Riverside County. With the cold back on the east coast, having an outdoor lunch at a winery (a first for both Tim and me) was a real highlight of the entire outreach time.

Following lunch, we had to find our way over to a southbound freeway, as we were off to visit with Randy Stubbs. Randy would be the second of three interview subjects for this trip. Since we were nowhere near Los Angeles, the freeway trip was pretty easy, and finding Randy’s house was only a little challenging, set back from the street as it is.

Randy’s Jack Russell terrier had recently had a litter, and he was in the process of selling the puppies. In fact, a couple were in his home as we arrived, inspecting the puppies in their playpen.

Once that inspection concluded (they didn’t buy that day, but they did come back later), we were able to move on into the interview. By the time this article is published, the interview will have been posted as a podcast on The 4EVER Group web site.

Unfortunately, Randy had other plans for the evening, leaving Tim and I to grab dinner in the Gaslamp Quarter, before heading back to Orange County. For Tim, the Gaslamp Quarter has two of his favorite places: The Hard Rock Café and the House of Blues. We settled on Mexican food, which still allowed Tim time to collect his memorabilia.

The PVN had arranged for a full-day 4EVER Group program on that Sunday. Tim and I alternated our programs, with both of us presenting one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. The PVN sold something on the order of fifty tickets to this all-day educational event, with lunch included in the price of admission. It was strange, everything considered, for Tim and I to sit in on each others program. And, as in every previous city, the presentations drew focused debate from the attendees.

Following the meeting, Tim joined several PVN members for dinner, while I took the hour-long drive to Riverside, to interview John Goolsby. We spent the better part of an hour at his studio, discussing topics of interest, before wrapping up the interview. After the interview, we took a ride to visit Chip, who was in the hospital. Since we scheduled the interview at the very last minute, John did not have time to tell Chip that I’d be coming along to visit. I have to figure that I was not exactly high up on the list of people Chip was expecting to see walk into his hospital room that night. When we discussed that later, Chip confessed to wondering exactly what drugs they had administered, because my walking in to his room had to be a hallucination.

On Monday morning, I began the arduous trip from LAX to Jacksonville. This required a plane change in Houston, which allowed me enough time for lunch. The Pappas family restaurant chain includes a burger place at the Houston airport, which made for possibly my best airport meal of the entire outreach effort. That chain operates restaurants under no less than nine different names, and I’ve now eaten at three (Pappadeaux, Pappasito’s Cantina, and Pappas Burger), and enjoyed them all. By the time I finally had dinner in Jacksonville, I had one of those quirky days that I enjoy talking about: three meals on that day, each in a different state and time zone.

The Tuesday night Jacksonville Videographers Association (JVA) meeting was held in probably the most unique of locations: the garage/studio for the video department of the Jacksonville Fire Department. One of the JVA members runs the studio for the JFD, making access quite easy. And since we were pretty close to Christmas, the pizza boxes were spread out around a variety of home-baked holiday treats.

Merrill Moore, the President of the JVA, had been a judge during the first-ever Artistic Achievement Awards competition. That made the Video Critique a natural program or the JVA. And for only the second time on the outreach, my presentation was recorded (I’m still waiting for a copy, nearly two months later). After the meeting, we continued the discussion over at a local Denny’s. It was easy to follow Merrill’s SUV, since it had the most outrageous Christmas decorations I’d ever seen on a moving vehicle.

And then, once again, the morning came, and it was time to get on a plane for the trip home. I visited a total of 18 cities over the course of seven trips. We were able to include podcast interviews, a Video Summit, and several other meetings during the time of this local association outreach program. As I detailed earlier, I flew on nine different airlines, and I didn’t bother counting hotel chains or car rental companies. My two different presentations reached hundreds of videographers all across the US. We still didn’t reach every association, which means there’s still more work to be done. That means more time out on the road, as 2006 will bring more local association presentations, more Video Summits, the Artistic Achievement Awards program, and that all will lead up to the 2007 4EVER Group convention. It looks like an exciting time.