Today, dad and I went to the SOITA Technology Conference at the Dayton Convention Center. We went last year, and I talked about it here. And this year, I took one of the workshops which last 2 sessions. It was over Pinnacle Studios 9. Since we purchased that for our Newton News crew when we got them a new computer, I thought I should take a peek at the program. Seems like a fun program for editing video. The one question that I really hoped the workshop presenter would be able to answer managed to stump him. That has to do with my video/audio synch problem which I have when encoding DVD videos through Nero. Maybe once I get the Newton News computer done, I’ll try encoding one of the videos and see. (I fear that it’s my processor speed. I wasn’t planning to upgrade soon.)

The first session was over Macromedia Captivate and another program whose name eludes me at the moment. Captivate and this other program do video captures of your actions on the screen, which is great for making short computer tutorials for online use. It’s a cool thing, but since I don’t even have our website done, it’s not anything we need yet.

The Pinnacle workshop was next followed by lunch. They treat the techs well by having a sit-down dinner starting with salad and rolls, then some sort of baked chicken dish with roasted potatoes & steamed veggies. Finally there was a choice of chocolate or lemon cake. (I went with chocolate.) Apparently for the teachers & administrators who come the next two days, they have a buffet. I like our sit-down dinner. Unfortunately we have to listen to the keynote speaker when we’re done. Last year, it was fun. The lady there showed us cool gadgets. This year, it was some Microsoft Monkey (who sounded *just* like Alan Alda, it was spooky!) telling us how Microsoft has the same goals as we do. Yeah, I wanna be a billionaire and take over the world, too!

The afternoon sessions were pretty bleak (two were by other Microsoft Monkeys, so I said “no” to those). I ended up going to Fortres Grand‘s session on their products. And I’m glad I went. (Most of the Miami County techs who were at SOITA also attended this session). Fortres has a new program out that will help with software & hardware inventory. Since it’s the same cost as Clean Slate, it’s a bargain. The only thing we don’t know about is if it works with NT4. If it does, we’ll probably get it.

One of our complaints the past couple of years at the SOITA conference has been that they don’t have the vendors until the next two days. Well, this year they decided to have a Vendor Sneek-A-Peek at 3:30pm (lasting about an hour). Most of the vendors were set up (or nearly so) and dad and I got to talk to most of ’em. We weren’t sure we could do the room in an hour, but we managed it. And got some new ideas and some freebies. So, YAY to SOITA for making headway here. (Unfortunately, the WorldWise company was back, selling crap software for $10 a CD. ARGH! Those poor unsuspecting teachers are REALLY gonna be screwed when they buy that crap and find out it won’t work on their computers cuz it’s too damn old!!!! I mean, that stuff doesn’t work on our machines and we’re still using Windows 98SE!!!)

All in all, a fun tech day. I hope that my students didn’t kill the sub today and vice versa. Guess I’ll find out tomorrow. 🙂