SAR Reunion

This past Sunday featured the 90th Anniversary celebration of Sigma Alpha Rho (SAR), my high school fraternity. I joined in 1974, while at William Tennent High School, and many of the guys I met back in the day are still my friends to this day. I’ll get some photos posted on this shortly. SAR is where I learned how to speak publicly, how to run meetings and events, and, through trips to Montreal, New Orleans, New York, Pittsburgh, Washington, DC, and many other locations, sparked my interest in travel.

For a long time, SAR was central to my life. I served on the various boards, and I was the national President in the early 1990’s. I’d been involved on the committees for other reunions, but not this one. There’s just too much going on in my world now to be able to take on another important task, and to do justice to that task.

The reunion was held at the Hilton hotel on City Avenue in Philadelphia. Although I didn’t get involved in the planning, I still accepted the assignment of projecting video at the reunion. There was a really campy film made in the late 1960’s, and we looped that video. One of the producers of that film was Alan Yasni, who went from filmmaker wannabe to a career in the TV industry. I met him at the reunion, and we had great fun deconstructing that film, which he hadn’t seen for years.

You never know what to expect at a reunion. I got to see two guys that I was friends with back in the 1970’s, but hadn’t seen in 30 years. One was a South Philly boy who became a successful lawyer in the Los Angeles. The other actually graduated with me from Tennent, but our lives went in separate directions. He now runs a restaurant in Jenkintown, PA.

I shot a wedding the night before the reunion, so I had less than four hours of sleep after a full, well-rounded Saturday. However, the energy that I picked up there was incredible. Even though I got to the hotel about 8am, and left about 2pm, that time passed all too quickly. We always tell brides and grooms that their wedding day will be a blur, and I had exactly that experience.

So I’m a little behind in blogging, and I need to catch up. I’m in Southern California right now, part of The 4EVER Group team at the Orange County Video Summit. I still have to write about the wedding from before the reunion, as well as this trip. Thanks for reading, and stop back soon.

GraVT Expo in Atlanta

One of the important missions of The 4EVER Group is our commitment to supporting industry events across the country. That’s what has me in Atlanta right now. One of the important vendors, the DV Shop, is having their Grand Opening today at their new facility. Their new space is in the Buckhead section of Atlanta, across the parking lot from another photo/video source, Showcase.

Together, both companies put together the GraVT Expo, with a combination of regional and national vendors. The Open House part ran from 9am to 8pm, which made for a pretty long day. They were nice enough to have morning coffee, plus lunch and dinner for anyone who stopped by.

Both the DV Shop and Showcase support the event video industry, so we had a table-top exhibit to answer attendee questions. Considering that Friday is an unusual day for an all-day industry event, the show was busy throughout. Maybe it was the food, or maybe it was the outstanding gear and workshops that were on the agenda.

I arrived early enough yesterday to take in the Braves-Padres game at Turner Field, before meeting with another half-dozen members of the Atlanta Videographers Association for dinner at an Italian restaurant that about killed us with the amount of food they served, and that was before the owner threw two giant slabs of dessert down in front of us, along with a huge bowl of strawberries.
We have a pretty busy schedule over the next few weeks, with events in Philadelphia, Southern California, Detroit, Dallas, Boston, and Long Island. Please keep checking back for more updates.