It's kind of like legacy code that software people have to deal with. We could probably come up with a better name but the whole things started with a daylong event way back when called Overview. This was the first of a string of day long events held by the Toronto Section of the AES.
Overview was followed by Overview II. Then came GroundView. You really had to search to find the topic of this one: noise in audio. (Thank goodness for subtitles!) Last year was MicView (an overview of microphone technology and techniques) and this it's SurroundView.
Every year we promise ourselves that we'll drop the view thing but it's become such a tradition that we can't bring ourselves to do it. Oh well. It could be worse. Think of how the guys who came up with DOS!
Canada's public broadcaster has faced a series of cutbacks over the past 10 or so years. And things have gotten much worse lately. Management is looking for ways to save money and everyone's contract is up (7000 employees represented by three unions). None of the unions is satisfied with the contract offers and now it's done to the possibility of a strike. As of this writing we've been in a legal strike/lockout position for two weeks. After much negotiating and mediation things were still unresolved so the unions have set a strike deadline for midnight Thurs the 23rd.
Perfect timing for us of course (not!) We knew of the potential for labour disruption so have had a backup plan all along. We have organized the meeting so that very little would be different between the two venues. It's meant a lot of extra work in organizing and a bit of extra money spent. But the CBC's Broadcast Centre has fine facilities which would be ideal for our demos. So we are holding out to the last possible moment before we make our decision. Stay tuned!
More questions and answers to come.
Copyright 1996