I’ve been in Tampa, Florida this week for AOPA Aviation Summit 2009. One of the great innovations this year is AOPA Live, a live streaming of selected portions of the event over the internet. In the past, about 10,000 people attended AOPA Expo each year. Yesterday, 20,000 people viewed AOPA Live, effectively tripling AOPA’s audience. That’s a smart move in a tough economy where General Aviation needs to spread its message as broadly and effectively as possible.
I was lucky to be one of the few people on both ends of AOPA Live. On Thursday…
I attended the general sessions at the Tampa Convention Center. But on Friday I slept in, as I tried to work off a sleep deficit, but was still able to view the morning general sessions from my hotel room via my laptop. Rather than use the hotel wireless, I tethered a laptop to my Verizon cell phone, which I thought would provide the higher data rates required to handle live video. It worked almost flawlessly, other than a few pauses in the video stream caused by twitter text messages arriving on the cell phone.
In addition to broadcasting the two morning general sessions, AOPA Live broadcasts interviews throughout the afternoon. These are produced on a raised set in the center of the exhibit hall. There are seats for an audience of perhaps 50 people and lots of standing room for others to watch the interviews.
At 2PM, Ian Twombly, AOPA Flight Training deputy editor interviewed me on Strategies for Better Glass Cockpit Flying. That 10 minute interview is now archived and should start to play as you open this web page. We first talked about the benefits of why a pilot might want to learn to fly a glass cockpit equipped aircraft. Then we talked about strategies for training in the aircraft and ways to maximize proficiency between flights. Finally, we talked about transition training for these aircraft, which things people adapt to quickly, and which ones often require more time. I hope you enjoy the video.
At 3:30 PM, I gave a presentation to a packed room called Practical Tips for Flying GPS & WAAS based Approaches. This is a new presentation and based on the enthusiastic response of the crowd, I’m going to figure out how to deliver it to more people around the country. Perhaps the funniest moment occurred just before I started speaking when the room was filled by the voice of an unseen speaker in the adjacent room starting his presentation. I paused long enough for my audience to realize that it wasn’t I that they were hearing and then began to lip-synch and pantomime as if I were speaking the words they were hearing. It was a fun improvisation and it brought the house down. I sure hope that part of the presentation made it onto the official audio recording of the session as it was a priceless moment.
On Saturday, I’ll be flying a vendor’s plane to test out a new product and later in the afternoon will be at SunState Aviation’s Open House at Kissimmee airport. Hope to see you either at AOPA Aviation Summit or at SunState!