Expo

How Mike managed to persuade the University that taking 11 of its most chaotic students on a luxury bus all the way to London town was sensible I shall never know. What I do know is that there is a whole world to broadcasting that I have only just scratched the surface of!

The Broadcast Video Expo in Earls Court is the largest technology fest of its kind in the UK. It is designed to help broadcast professionals peruse the new advancements in technology, check up on their rivals and hear about progress from the respected members of the broadcast community. In truth a lot of the exhibition was focused at selling and buying, things that my student account couldn't possibly handle! This meant that I took on a kind of role at the exhibition. In this role I was a very interested customer with a cheque book lurking in my handbag! Yes I did make sure my name tag which screamed the words "BATH SPA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE" was hidden!

I have a thing about consoles. Maybe because I spent two years of my life trying to understand them, but hopefully just because I have a genuine interest in how the signals of the sound is maneuvered through them. This interest meant that I found myself heading straight for the Roland stand. They had their incredible live sound console (M-400) on display and I was impressed at how compact it was. Working in layers like the Mackie D8B that i had used before meant that it had 48 channels and a further 16 auxileries! It had a digital display that allowed the user to have almost complete control over the sound, to a degree I had never seen before from a digital console. The Roland technician said that it was by far the most portable and reliable console he had been on tour with. He would say that though, he was the Roland technician! It also had somewhere you could plug in your usb and save your settings so when on the road you didn't have to spend hours fixing the sound at the next destination.

After that I meandered round the rest of the exhibition. There were touchscreen consoles, 3D televisions, expensive cameras, subscriptions to Broadcasting magazines, colour correction software and a couple of fast cars, of course!

The technology on display was mind blowing. The Tricaster was very popular! I'm not sure wether this was because of the actual product or how the salesman/smoothtalker made it feel that all our lives was missing was a Tricaster!

It is actually a fascinating bit of kit which can put you in a virtual studio where ever you are. It is also fairly sophisticated and I was most impressed with the virtual reflections it was able to produce in the virtual polished surface of the virtual desk he was virtually sitting behind. Here is the website.

All in all it was very interesting and although much of the technology and equipment was beyond our current know-how it was great to be completely surrounded by my future career for a day!