The room was artificially cool, my fold out stadium-seated desk was uncomfortable and the windowless walls and fluorescent lighting left me without any sense of time.  This scenario would normally rank pretty high on my torture meter, but there I sat taking it all in like a sponge.

As the Memorial Day weekend was in full swing and most Americans were out enjoying their afternoon barbeques, backyard football games or quality time near rivers, lakes and oceans, I was sitting inside.  

I loved it. 

I was in a classroom at the University of Colorado in Boulder wrapping up an educational and inspiring few days at the Aurora Multimedia Workshop.

            The line up of presenters ranged from photographers, film-makers, writers and editors to marketing directors, higher ups in the ad world, Pulitzer Prize winners, company Presidents and multimedia pioneers.  These were across the board innovators and media Ninjas in my mind.

            I watched and listened in awe as James Balog went through his Extreme Ice Survey presentation.  I forgot to breathe while Jim Sheeler talked about what went into “Final Salute,” the story of the Marine escort officer that returned the bodies of slain Marines from Iraq while tending to the needs of the surviving family.  Even hearing Dick Durrance’s account of how a 19-year-old kid (Dick) was able to shoot a cover story for National Geographic was unreal.  So unreal in fact that the audience’s uniform reaction was, “Holy s**t!”  For the techno folks out there, we even had an exclusive first look at Sports Illustrated’s new platform for handling this whole new / multi-media movement.

            Incredible!

In all, it was exhausting but completely worthwhile.  I walked out of each day overwhelmed with the potential we all have as visual communicators and a new drive to put everything I learned into practice.

There are stories around every corner and now we have a variety of new tools with which to tell them.  Why not adapt and evolve?  We have all seen the changes in the publishing world and though no one is completely sure what the new model will be, we should be working toward it.  Those are my two cents anyways.

This may seem like a far cry from my usual adventure story posts, but I disagree.  We are on the cusp of something very different, something very new and something nobody knows how to even describe.  I mean, what is multimedia?  That sounds like the makings of an adventure to me.

“Creativity without craftsmanship is like a million times zero.” 
-Dick Durrance (Aurora Multimedia Workshop Presenter)