#reIMAGINE2015 – Post Conference

I know reIMAGINE finished over a week ago, but today is the first day since the end of the conference that I have had a change to sit down and start writing about it. Before you ask, there is a reason I am start with the Post Conference article…..

I have to start with an apology. I did something very stupid, even ignoring the advice of an expert. On the day after the conference was over, my Panasonic Lumix compact camera broke, the lens would not longer open, the zoom system had failed. After trying to see if anyone stocked a similar camera (so I could use the same batteries, cables, charger, etc.), I ended up buying a new Sony compact camera with similar (but slightly better) features.

When I bought the camera, the assistant at the camera shop said “make sure you copy the photos from the old camera off the memory card before using it in the new camera.”. I agreed as this was good advice. Then while waiting to get picked up from the store by a friend, I decided to do the initial setup of the new camera and try to learn its features. Then I did the stupid thing and put the memory card in the new camera. It came up with a couple of dialogs which seemed innocent enough. Then it mentioned something about NTSC video format and when I clicked OK, it formatted the card. Boom, no warning that it was going to erase data, no confirmation. I tried numerous programs to attempt to recover the photos, but no data was found anywhere on the card.

I normally back up photos from the camera to my computer each night when I travel (just in case), but had been so busy that I had not done a back up since the day before the conference. So the end result is that I have no photos from the reIMAGINE 2015 conference at all. Before you ask, the card was cleared before my US trip so I have not lost any other photos or videos, just the conference. So if you were in a photo taken by me and were hoping to be made famous by being featured on my blog… I am sorry… It won’t be happening this time around.

After getting very angry and grumpy with myself and berating myself for not backing up daily and for not being patient enough to wait until I had got back to the hotel to copy the files off the memory card, I realised that the photos were gone and were not coming back.

I spoke with my “sagely” wife and she reminded me that the only person who really knew what photos were lost was me and the consequences of this moment of stupidity were really quite minor and harmless.

I will also mention that the new camera is really impressive and has taken some great shots which you will see soon in the blog posts for what I have been up to since reIMAGINE.

So the points to take away from this post are:

• Sorry, I have no photos from the conference, I might use ones from other people if I can.
• Don’t ignore advice from people who know, especially after you agreed with it.
• Backup your photos, both the ones on memory cards and the ones already saved to hard drives.
• I am human and I can make mistakes along with everyone else.
• Finally, listen to your spouse/partner, etc.

I will shortly write and post my recollections from the reIMAGINE 2015 conference.

David

This article was originally posted on http://www.winthropdc.com/blog.