Aaron Jones Magician » Magic Conventions

My Review Of The Essential Magic Conference

Aaron Jones — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 03:51:13 +0000

Watching The EMC

The Essential Magic Conference, the first digital magic conference, was held from July 15 to the 17 2010. When I first saw this advertised I knew I had to be apart of this event and I signed up right away. I was not wrong this was a wonderful event. Over those 3 days I had almost no sleep. The live event was held from 12am Japan time until about 7:30am because of the time zone. The event was organized by Luis de Matos, Marco Tempest and David Britland. They did a brilliant job bringing a big and new project like this to life. It had 33 speakers and they all where at the Studio in Portugal, and the participants watched live from the Internet. Participants also get 1 year access to the website which will have all the sessions as on demand viewing after the event and as well receive the event on DVD. The cost for this event was about 75$US which was well worth it. Below the break I will talk about what I enjoyed about the conference.

Each day was broken down into 3 sessions each with a variety of presentations on magic theory, performances, teaching, and history. Each session was either 1 or 2 hours with an hour break after the first session of the day and a 90 minute break between the 2nd and 3rd sessions. This was dangerous for me and I fell asleep 2 of the days at this time and missed the 3rd sessions as this was 4:00am Japan time, but thanks to the on-demand I can go back and watch the sessions I missed.

The sessions were well organized and I must say the presentations were great. The presenters seemed to have spent a lot of time preparing for their time. It was also easy to see what they they were showing and understand what they were saying. Because all the participants where watching on the net and at the live venue where just the crew and the 33 magicians a lack a large audience sometimes seemed to through off timing of some performers because of a lack of applause and laughing feedback. This was very evident during the last day when Gazzo performed. This perhaps was one of the biggest differences from a real conference or convention. There of course was feedback in the chat room. Maybe next year they could have a big screen that the performers can see easily and see the feedback from the chat room.

The information and knowledge shared in this conference was excellent and I myself learned a lot. There were a lot of new and different ideas shared and I really enjoyed this. A cool thing that even though this was held on the net there definitely was a sense of community between the magicians watching. This was shared through the chat room and twitter for me. I also was able to make some new friends and make some new connections from attending this conference. People stayed in the chat room during the breaks and continued chatting. Everyone who is a member of EMC has a profile page and it would have been nice to click their avatar in the chat room and go to their profile page or have some kind of private message system.

Technically for me there we no problems. On the first day there was a problem for me and buffering of the video every few seconds but I think that this was due to a problem with my set up which I corrected on the second day and had no further problems. I found the layout good and easy to understand and I could easily switch back and forth to full screen. There were some of the normal issues you get even at live events such as bad mics and wrong videos being played at certain points but over all for the first time my opinion is that it went off pretty much without a hitch and I am sure they learned a lot and expect a even better experience next year.

There was one problem that I did have and it was not form anyone from the event or the crew but from some of the participants in the chat room. Because this was an international event, many of the presenters are not native English speakers, yet they performed, or presented in English. All of them were understandable and did a good job, but some people, a low percent, made negative comments about people’s accents that were not appropriate. Magic is and international art form and we need to be tolerant and listen carefully and pay attention and if you do you will understand. As I now perform mostly in Japanese these days I know how stressful it is to perform in another language and I have blogged about my experiences with this before. So those of you have never really had a international experience like this please be patient and listen carefully when a nonnative English speaker presents because you will understand if you put in the effort.

In this blog I think I covered all the points that I wanted and I really enjoyed this event and I look forward to it next year. It will be held again July 7th to 9th 2011. Make sure you attend next year you will not be disappointed.

Aaron

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Magic AudioBoo Essential Magic Conference Aftermath

Aaron Jones — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 03:11:49 +0000

Today’s Magic AudioBoo is about the Essential Magic Conference.
Listen!

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No Sleep This weekend!

Aaron Jones — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:48:59 +0000

This weekend I will probably get almost no sleep! Lucky it is a long weekend here in Japan. Why is this? well, with the Essential Magic Conference and Shikoku Magic Friends activities in Takamatsu I will be doing magic all day and all night. Most of the Essential Magic Conference live broadcasts start after 12:00AM Japan time so that means no sleep. Then driving to Takamatsu on Saturday coming home at around 12:00AM then online for the conference. Going to be a great time and hopefully it will motivate me even more. Today is just a short blog so below enjoy a video of Lance Burton from the Essential Magic Conference site.
Aaron

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EMC Videos

Aaron Jones — Wed, 12 May 2010 10:52:29 +0000

As I mentioned before I have already signed up for the Essential Magic Conference that is being held on-line this July. I am so interested in this not only for the magic but how they are integrating magic with technology, the internet, and Social Networking. They have a lot of great videos already posted that are open for public viewing. So far they are excellent and shows what will come this July. Below is their most recent video of Apollo Robbins. Check this one out then head the their site and check out the other ones.
Aaron

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The 5th Shikoku Magic Convention and Others

Aaron Jones — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 09:25:35 +0000

Shikoku Magic Convention 2009

So far this year I have plans to attend only one magic convention and that is the Shikoku Magic Convention which will be held in Takamatsu on May 8th and 9th, 2010. Last year it was a great convention. Some of the performers this year are Bravo Nakatani and Hikari. Looking forward to this convention.

There is also another convention I would like to attend and that is the which will be held on the Internet in July. This is the Essential Magic Conference. This is a cool concept and I hope that I can attend it should be easy because I can attend at home. I like it because living in Japan it’s hard to visit any other conventions outside of Japan. This convention can give me the opportunity to attend from the comfort of my MackBookPro. Also Dodd Vickers from the Magic Newswire did a This Week In Magic episode on this convention which can be found here.

As I mentioned I have only plan to attend the one convention and will probably attend the online convention but I sure hope that I can go to at least one more during the summer. During the Shikoku Magic Convention I hope to send updates by Audioboo, and some video via YouTube from the convention as well as blogging from it.

Aaron

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Have Fun With Magic!

Aaron Jones — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:07:41 +0000

Having Fun At Vancouver Weekend of Magic 2000

The picture to the left here is from when I went to the Vancouver Magic Weekend in 2005. It is one of the pictures I rescued from my old drive last week. As you can see in the picture I was having fun. I forget what event this was I was performing for I don’t think it was the stage show. This picture reminded me how fun magic can be to perform. And this is very important that we do have fun when we perform magic. Most all of us start magic because it is fun, but when you start to do it full time you can forget the fun parts, while working on the business and other aspects of making a living in magic. If you are new to magic have FUN doing it. When we as performers enjoy doing the magic OUR audiences are sure to enjoy the magic as well. Let your personality shine through when you perform. Have fun with the magic effects and have fun with the people whom your performing for. Enjoy your magic! It it something I try not to forget, but I really enjoy performing for both small and large audiences.

I have an interesting war story about being at this Vancouver weekend of Magic in 2000. I was asked a few months before it to perform in the close-up show. So I worked on my close-up routine for the weekend. However when I arrived to the mini convention from Victoria I found out I was now scheduled to perform at the stage show. However, I didn’t bring any of my stage stuff. But thanks to my friends Shawn Farquhar and Graeme Kingston I was able to perform. Shawn let me use his Jumbo Sidekick and Lori agreed to be my assistant and Graeme lent me his straight jacket. The straight jacket is a regular part of my act, however I have never used a Jumbo Sidekick before. So on that day Shawn walked me through how to perform Jumbo Side kick and I worked on a routine for it. Now I don’t condone performing an effect on the day you learn it but this day I did. The only reason I could kind of pull it off is from my performing experience and the help of my friends. The show went fine with no problems and I was so nervous when I performed Jumbo Sidekick. But thanks to good magic friends I was able to pull off an fun performance. I’ll never forget them for their great help that day. So one good thing make lots of good friends with your fellow magicians because you never know when you will need their help or they will need yours.

PS If anyone has a video of my performance that that Weekend Of Magic Please let me know!

That is enough of my rambling for today but if you have any comments please post them!
Aaron

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The Shikoku Magic Convention was Great!

Aaron Jones — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:36:02 +0000

Shikoku Magic Convention

The Shikoku Magic Convention held on May 9 and 10th 2009 in Takamatsu Kagawa Prefecture was great! I have not be able to attend a Magic Convention for almost 3 years. I enjoyed my time to see old friends and meet some new ones. It is always great to connect with people of the same interests. I must apologize for the bad photos as forgot to bring my regular digital camera so I had to use my iPhone. Anyways after the break I will explain about the 2 day convention!

On Saturday May 5th the convention opened. The first event was the dealers show. Various dealers from around Japan had come and had a chance to show off their goods. Was the same as any dealer show back in Canada and the US I have been to. After the dealer’s show was the stage show was great. It had many performers from the Shikoku area as well from around Japan. Was a great show and was a great opportunity to see other performs from the area.

Mr. Fukai and me

The event and the longest of the 2 day convention was next the stage competition. There were 17 performers! Was good but got very long. It was a peoples choice contest so we had to keep careful track of what people did before choosing out favorite three. One of my Good Japanese magician friends Shinnotsuke was in the contest and it was great to see him perform. The Winner were announced the following day. 1st Place went to Ri Jei Yon ( Spelling?) 2nd place was Mr. Sato who did a wonder Japanese themed act my favorite of the event. 1st place went to Mr. Kobayashi and University Student. He performed a mask act and was very energetic and well polished.

The last event of the first day was the close up show. Again was a good chance to see great local performers. The first day was very long. The convention opened at 12 noon and ended around 10PM.

Terushita

Sunday the 2nd day started with 2 lectures. The 2 lectures were Mr. Fukai Who is famouse for his parasol act over many years internationally and Mr. Fujimoto who perfromed soem of his manipulation act which was quite different and enjoyable and went over soem of the techniques he uses in his routines. After the lectures was the presentation ceremony for the winners of the contest. The last event of the convention was the Preuim Stage show which was also open to the public They ran this show twice. This was a great show and my good Magician friend from Takamatsu Terushita was in the show. The show was excellent and professionally set up. I really enjoyed it! It was announced that the convention will be held again next year in Kagawa. I am really looking forward to next years. It will be held May 8 and 9th 2010. I want to Thank Treat and all those at Magic Pot for putting on a great magic convention!

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