Conventions

Sept. 6-9, 2011: Photoshop World was the ultimate  convention  for both amateur and professional photographers. The  convention featured three days of more than 100 photoshop, photography, printing, special effects, retouching and lighting. Instructors included well-known photographers such as Jeremy Cowart, Jay Maisel, Joel Grimes, Cliff Mautner, Helene Glassman and Fay Sirkis. The free  Photoshop World Expo provided a place for  photographers of all levels to mingle and check out the coolest new technology, gadgets and services available.

This one comes to you courtesy of the DMA, the Direct Marketing Association. NCOF is their National Conference on Operations & Fulfillment. Things started getting really complicated when direct marketing graduated from just sending out paper mailings (they hate the term junk-mail, as it ignores the care and effort they put in to targeting products at exactly the right kind of people) and began to colonize the Web. Internet marketing raises the game enormously, but also adds a whole new level to all that Operations & Fulfillment stuff that the convention was convened to talk about. As “an industry run on brainpower”, these guys feel the need to nurture, maintain and grow talent throughout the world of marketing, and even more so in the world of direct and interactive marketing. Hey, what do I do with this offer from the Readers’ Digest?

HDI is the Annual World Conference for IT Service and Technical Support. This service and technical support conference addresses the IT needs of a company’s entire team — from seasoned directors to front-line analysts — and provides insight into how formal procedures, processes, and industry tools can improve service and support performance. A keynote on “How to Win an Unfair Fight” asked “How do you get people to do what you want them to do without looking like a jerk (or a psychopath)? How do you learn how to handle the difficult people you encounter along the way without losing your sanity?” This is need-to-know stuff, you IT people. Okay, okay… Whaddya mean, the screen is still black? Did you try plugging the darn thing in?

Once you see all those black-and-yellow keyhole logos scattered around the convention center, you know you’re at a Security Industry event. ISC West is the International Security Conference and Exposition, and they’re there to remind you that you have plenty of stuff you want locked away and kept safe. There was much to learn about how to do that. There was a Security Cloud Computing panel, a discussion about how physical security applications can reduce cost and create value by leveraging the internet Cloud. Other panels explored novel techniques like video analytics, biometric technology and Personal Emergency Response Systems. Feeling secure now? You earned some out-of-town fun, like the scenic motorcycle and sports-car ride through the Valley of Fire and Hoover Dam area, raising funds for volunteer groups and publicly paid first-responders who take courses on safety-related issues. Stay safe, now, y’hear?

If you were on a TV quiz show and had to say what NACHA was, you’d guess perhaps a Russian exotic dancer? Or maybe the Miss Tex-Mex Snackfood Queen? How wrong you would be. NACHA is about Payments, and is in fact the Electronic Payments Association. The folks you’d be rubbing up against at the show would be Payments Executives, Officers, Managers, Consultants, Analysts, AAPs, CTPs, and professionals with responsibilities in things like fraud detection, risk management, payment processing, treasury and cash management, card services and the like. What would a NACHA hot topic look like? Well, “From payments convergence and next-generation solutions to P2P and alternative payments” was the topic that was on everyone’s lips, driving industry dialogue. Plus of course “Corporate Account Takeover – Impacts, Detection & Prevention”. And no, sorry, we do not cash personal checks…