Essential Magic Conference 2010

Dec 14, 2007
817
2
Ahhh ... the too good to be true feeling.

I can see that.

I do believe, knowing many of the people involved, they will deliver up to or exceed expectations.

And Just1pin hit the nail on the head. The costs of a live convention can be staggering. Rental on SIMPLE A/V equipment at a hotel can run into tens of thousands of dollars before the first person walks into the door.

As to the English issue, English is the official language for MANY scholarly, scientific, and political organizations/events. It has been this way for decades if not a century.
 

j.bayme

ceo / theory11
Team member
Jul 23, 2007
2,848
352
New York City
Just to add further insight to this thread, I had a discussion last night for over an hour with Luis de Matos about this event, and everything he has planned is nothing short of brilliant.

The only thing I thought was insane was the price: $75. It's crazy, but he is operating it as a non-profit entity. At that low of a price (including a DVD of the event), EMC runs the risk of being seen as WORTH $75 instead of PRICED at $75. It's not worth $75. It's easily, easily worth 10 times that amount.

Luis de Matos has certainly achieved outstanding success in his career, and this is his way of giving back. I applaud it.

Although it is not yet announced, theory11 is a partner in EMC, and we will be announcing further details in the weeks and months to come.
 
A couple days ago, the organizers of this conference were on Dodd's podcast MagicNewswire. http://m.podshow.com/media/17716/episodes/221573/themagicnewswire-221573-03-23-2010.mp3

The media is supposed to be on-demand for one year also. They stated you could also watch with many of your friends and this would lower the cost. I don't believe that this is a scheme, Marco Tempest is an awesome person who believes in ideas like open source. I think this should be a great opportunity to heard ideas from people who already have made accomplishments in the magic world. Heck, some people pay over $75 for cable/satellite to watch hours of crap and infomercials. This will be worth it for three days of ideas from performers from all over the world.
 
Mar 16, 2010
23
0
A magical Island
As to the English issue, English is the official language for MANY scholarly, scientific, and political organizations/events. It has been this way for decades if not a century.

Hi Brad,

I don't know if you are affiliated with the conference at all so i don't mean to direct thoughts and comments to you personally, just to the idea of an "international" English only event.

i understand that many people, parts of the world, and organizations view English as a lingua franca. There is a long and not so pretty historical reason for this. However "other people do it so we can too" doesn't really address my concern.

There is a big difference between "official language" and "only language". English is the official language of the United Nations and The International Olympic Committee, but no one would accept the Olympics only being broadcast in English.

To me it's not a question of why, but why not? I personally have organized multi-lingual events, it's not as difficult as some might imagine it to be. It might not work perfectly 100% of the time and you can't please everyone, but you can certainly make an effort. To me that's what it's all about.

We know that there are thriving magic communities of both professional and young aspiring magicians in Central and South America, China, Japan, India, and maybe one of the most vibrant in Spain. This is an opportunity to have a non-localized, worldwide magic convention. This is the magic of our new digital technology. Why exclude so many of these voices? So many of these young people around the world are hungry for this knowledge, why not make the effort to include them? to broaden the magic community.

As i said before i think there are ways this could be done with little to no financial cost and with only a small amount of organization. Certainly Portuguese and Spanish wouldn't be hard. I'm sure half of the people in the studio would have a good handle on these languages.

I feel to make the effort goes a long way.

care,
J1P
 
Mar 16, 2010
23
0
A magical Island
I contacted the organizers of EMC on the topic of language accessibility and brought up my concerns with them. This is the response they sent me today...

Quote:

As a multi-national team (Portuguese, Spanish, French, English, German, American) we know the value of being able to communicate to as many people as possible. And we agree entirely with your sentiments about broadcasting to the widest possible audience. This is our first digital conference and we are sure that we will learn a lot from doing it. In the future we would certainly hope to address some of the points you have made. Time and technology will make some of those goals possible. But so too will the 'can do' attitude that we have here at EMC.

You may have noticed that at Studio 33 our first DVD Luis de Matos Extreme had subtitles in five languages. Our next DVD, Lennart Green Masterfile will have subtitles in six languages. EMC2010 is the first step. We hope there will be many more.

Best wishes,

The EMC Team



This comforts me to know that they are really thinking about this issue and have been producing their DVDs with multi-lingual options(i was not aware of that until they noted it). I still believe the technology is here now and that we could make this happen for this conference. That said I respect these folks a lot in what they are doing and wish them the very best of luck.
 
Dec 14, 2007
817
2
Just1pin,

I both understand and respect your position. However idealism and tradition are often at odds. What if, is a great question. But it has been my experience that 'it's not broke...' often trumps in practice.

I am thrilled the organizers of the conference are sympathetic to your concerns.

I think you will find this to be an exception, not the rule.
 

Mike.Hankins

creator / <a href="http://www.theory11.com/tricks/
Nov 21, 2009
435
0
Sacramento, Cali
Simply amazing...cannot wait!

And just as an aside and to add on what Mr. Shane Black had typed, Jeff Hobson DID have an online magic lecture circuit, but it came to a halt. BUT, from what I DO know, All of those lectures from Hobson will be released on a DVD set...not sure when, but there are some greatttt names that will be on that set...

Mike
 

RickEverhart

forum moderator / t11
Elite Member
Sep 14, 2008
3,637
471
46
Louisville, OH
Hobson was at the last convention I was at in Ohio a few weeks ago. What he does now is offer a 25 person max lecture for $50.00 per person. It lasts 3 hrs. and covers a great deal of the business side of magic. You can purchase his DVD of that lecture for an additional $20 I think it was.
 
Searching...
{[{ searchResultsCount }]} Results