Dowbrigade

Last
night, while girding our intellectual loins for a tepid year-end academic
reception at Sol
Azteca,
a Mexican restaurant (duh) near
campus, we decided to afterward attend "HD in Motion," the
Boston Final Cut Pro User Group’s
year-end industry social.  But
first we had to at least make an appearance at the annual office Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanza
Party.

Some Einstein high
in administration or budgeting had combined the Holiday Celebrations
of
the Center of English
Language
and
Orientation
Programs and the Office of International
Programs, which obviously have
nothing to do with each other. It was like a junior high-school dance,
with all the guys on one side of the gym and the babes on the other.
Neither the cuisine nor the conversation was very spicy, and we slipped
out early.

The video event was at "Ned
Devines" another Boston
faux-Irish Chain Pub, this one at the tourist magnet Faneuil Hall, near
Government Center. Upon entering, it was clear we had were sailing
in very different
seas. Entering uncharted territories. The Videophiles are a very distinct
cultural sub-grouping of geeks and gearheads, with their own language,
look and organizational logic.

Most of them were young, but with a respectable smattering
of greybeards mixed among the several hundred attendees. The place was
set up for show and tell, with a powerful projector feeding a 20-foot
screen at the front of the dark, cavernous room. The first feature was
a cinematic
promo video for the FireStore F-3, a small, high-speed hardrive
capable of capturing raw video in real time and recording it in Quicktime
DVD format using something called Direct to Edit technology. A TV reporter
is racing to get back to the station with some sizzling scoopy footage,
madly editing and dubbing in the back of the station van, arriving seconds
before air-time.  Because he shot his video directly onto a FireStore
FS-3 hard drive using DTE technology he is able to edit on the run and
deliver a broadcast-ready piece, saving everybody’s jobs. This was the
product
(actually the soon
to be introduced FS-4)
which had attracted our attention to the event.

The only person in attendance we knew was one of the
stars of the
video, the inestimable Steve
Garfield, who was also the
person who first told me about the FS-4.  He too covets one, and
he followed up on our brainstorm of asking for a review model by actually
asking for a review model (he knows the FireStore people and they owe
him a favor) and they turned HIM down, so our chances look dim.

What followed were much more mundane demos and concentrated
sales pitches for products which we barely understood and were certain
to never actually use.  Nevertheless, it is a testimony to both
the powers of persuasion of the presenters and the susceptibility to
advertising
of the Dowbrigade that by the end of each of the presentations we were
convinced
that we
absolutely needed the product in question. The facts that we barely understood
what the products did, would never have a need for their functionality
and in fact did not own a computer powerful enough or have the prerequisite
software needed to run them, were easily overlooked details.  And,
dangerously, we had a pocketful of cash from a French-Lebanese student
who had told his
parent
weeks ago that he had sent in his college apps when in fact he hadn’t
even started them and needed desperately to get them done before flying
back to Paris today.

We left after drinking two beers and before doing something
we knew we would regret later. We have much better things to waste our money on.