Hi Guys,
I know you don't know where I'm coming from so I'll share (a bit) because I hope I will have a chance to meet you in the future...(Ric is the only one who has met me and he can confirm how much of a newb I am.)
I take responsibility and thoroughly enjoy educating myself on a subject and not being a total burden to those who have already done their homework. Especially since I find that most of everything is experience and paying dues. So instead of asking all the vets a bunch of the same questions (I did ask some newb questions and had some newb doubts in the beginning), I decided to go get some listening in.
There were no real meets I could attend and so after one vet suggested that all it took was "for someone to set a date and book a room" I finally just decided to do it. (And did exactly that - set a date and then tried to book the room, which was not available).
Since then, I successfully got a room and have had other vets chiming in behind the scenes <in much appreciated ways> to help me with the OTHER things it turns out that people might need or want. Now, I'm not into nanny-states, but instead of answering the same questions in PMs or on the thread a bunch of times, I just added to the first posts when I got any relevant info. This way, instead of having to follow hairnets (I know, I know) members could be reasonably confident that they could find updates and details in the beginning of the thread instead of having to re-read through everything to try to figure out what is going on.
In one of my past lives (though I still take occasional corporate work) I was a professional photographer for over 8 years. I was also a production manager for two years on national advertising shoots. So location scouting and providing information for client/agency/crew was part of my job.
The reason that the thread isn't pretty is that my current job is using the same set of communication tools (photos/photoshop) in a <very rough way> to develop product with suppliers in China. Since we have Chinese and other vendors flying in to the meet plus people driving up from Southern California, I just remembered flying all over the country and shooting in 4 states in 5 days. I always liked ANY reconnaissance provided to me by assistants or any info that I could see on the web to visualize what I was in for.
It's pretty easy for me for me to do this stuff, it is what I have done daily, and I hoped it would help people. But yeah, I also do come across as OTT and OCD sometimes too. Hope it all works in everyone's favor.
I hope I tip a dram with all of you someday (maybe soon),
CEE TEE
