StarLink and live streaming to youtube

From April 15-19 we were at the SKP ACRE RV Rally in Brunswick, GA. We always enjoy a reason to get out in our little RV. This was home for the week.

How cool that Jim got to play with a Starlink fish and connection for our youtube show. We're at an rv rally and doing our live streaming youtube show. The parks wifi is pretty dismal. Our cell phones are giving us pretty good connectivity but when another rver offered Jim the use of his StarLink dish, he said Thank You! 

The dish itself was just sitting on the roof of John's RV. He climbed up a ladder and grabbed it down. They placed it on the grass outside of the room we were using, and put the router in the room. There was something they had to do with the phone in order to point the dish correctly, then it was just a matter of connecting our computers to the wifi signal that was coming from the router. The speed was quite good, the show went well except for one 5 minute stretch where we muted ourselves. 

We've cut that portion out on the youtube recording and about 700 people have watched it so far. It was fun to have a live audience. 

Goshen, Indiana

Anybody here a fan of Firesign Theatre? It's actually one of the things that got me and Jim together way back when. We both knew the lines and would repeat them in unison:

"How long since we left Goshen?"

If you go to RV rallies much, you end up in Goshen sooner or later. One year we spent a couple of months there, attending rally after rally. Why? Goshen is right next to Elkhart, Indiana and the whole area is where many RV manufacturers are located. It is the RV capital of the world. The Elkhart county fairgrounds are in Goshen and provide plenty of parking, display, and meeting rooms for rallies. And ... lots of railroads and trains. It's just not a campground without the whistle of trains passing by, and Goshen has them aplenty.

We were there for the Discovery Owners RV Club.

We thought our clocks must be wrong since these were the only people there when it came time to start our Google Photos seminar. We are accustomed to 100 or more people. I think the rest decided to go golfing?! So, Jim got in the picture twice to make it look like more! :-)

My favorite thing is helping people with their phones, one-on-one.

The view from our booth in the vendor hall.

A wonderful thing about attending rallies is the entertainment. We try to take advantage and attend whenever we can. The Singer/Guitarist called Bat was spectacular. One guy with a 12 string guitar, a great singer and fantastic entertainer. Check out his website and and book him for your even if he's anywhere in the area.

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Safari RV Rally - 30th Anniversary

We've attended many Safari rallies because our first RV was a Safari. We presented our seminars at their 20th anniversary in Amana Colonies in 2008. Now it was their 30th Anniversary and the rally was in Shawnee Oklahoma at a location called the Heart of Oklahoma conference center. What a fitting way to kick off the rally - a blood drive!

Safari RVs are known for their wonderful murals custom-painted on the back of the RVs.

We presented a few seminars and scheduled private smartphone helpdesk sessions. It was a good rally.

We did have an odd experience with our Verizon signal that I want to remember - When we first got there, we tested the speed on our phones and were quite happy with the 10-20Mbps speed. Once we were parked and settled, we were using our phones as hotspots and the Internet came to a crawl. We considered moving to another section, we took our phones up there and tested and it was nice and fast. That was really weird. I tested it again back at our site, but outside rather than inside the rig. Very weird indeed. The speed outside was 10-20, inside was less than 1. So we rigged up a way to put the phone outside and plugged into power, then put it into a cooler with some ice in a ziplock (because it was hot outside) We could then use our computers inside, connecting to the phone's hotspot outside and all worked fine. We still have no idea what the interference was. That's a first!

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We Pour at Four

From June 6-10, we were at the Glamarama RV rally in Allegan, Michigan. There were around 300 RVs there, but we parked in a section with just the Roadtreks. This is great because the President of the Roadtrek chapter of FMCA, Sherry Targum, makes sure that we have a space for group happy hours, and she "Pours at Four." Jim and I fit right in!



We were here to teach. We taught 4 seminars: Google Photos, Smartphone Basics, Technology for Travelers, and Create your Online Travelogue.
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Jim also took some drone video of the fairgrounds with all the RVs here. Part of our "Create your Travelogue" seminar teaches how to embed that video in a blog post, just like this!

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Yuma and the Fleetwood Rally

This was the last of our Arizona rallies, and it was great. Smaller than the other ones, about 120 RVs were registered. We really like this size, it's big enough to have lots of energy in the seminars, but small enough to allow time for one-on-ones during the rally.

This is what I (Chris) really like to do. Sit down with someone who has questions about their smartphone and work with them and their phone, one on one. We print up a sign-up sheet for 30 minute time slots for free. Sometimes two people get together, but we're still talking personal attention and their phones in their hands. Hands-on. That's the way you really learn.

And, we learn too! We had a couple of people who had forgotten the passwords to their main account - the one that is necessary in order to get new Apps, or make major changes to your settings. One was on an iPhone and the other an Android. Neither Jim nor I have ever had to go thru this on our own phones, so helping others taught us a lot. We ended up thinking it was such an important thing to know that we made our next "What Does This Button Do" show about it:

They also had some great fun at this rally. Jim got out the drone to capture the golf cart rodeo. Sweet!

What is wrong with this seminar?

This week we were invited to be the featured speaker at a Roadtrek rally. Roadtrek are the top of the line camper vans. People who travel in them like to get together. That's a Roadtrek rally.

Our big rig looks like a mama duck and her flock of little Roadtreks!

We've presented seminars at these Roadtrek rallies many times and this time they gave us a whole day of their schedule. That's a first! You look at the schedule of rally events and, on Tuesday it just said 9-4: Geeks on Tour.  We used the morning to present our seminar called Technology for Travelers, and Google Photos. Then we took all afternoon to teach What Does This Button Do, a Primer on Using Smartphones and Tablets.

With all afternoon to  present a seminar we often have to squeeze into an hour, you'd think I'd feel like we really covered the waterfront, but it was the opposite. At the end of the day as I'm reviewing in my mind, all I could think of was all the stuff we didn't teach. "Oh, darn! I didn't show them xx. Or yy, Or zz. They spent all day with us, and they didn't learn about __________"

You see, we teach a weekly class via YouTube called What Does This Button Do and we're on episode 106. I think I want to cram all 100 hours of that show into our seminar. Obviously that's not possible, so maybe the focus of our seminar should be showing people how to find topics in our archives of online shows?  I was especially distressed on Tuesday night that we didn't show examples of that show. There were many people in the audience who had never seen us before and after spending all day with us, they still didn't know about our weekly show? 

Ok, so I should redesign the seminar to focus on excerpts from the show and teach them how to find their desired topic in the archives, right? 

No, people come to a live presentation to see, you know, a live presentation? Not a bunch of recorded clips. We need both.

1. Acquaint the audience with our show,
2. teach them some good stuff in the live presentation. 
3. this needs to fit in a one hour time slot because, sometime, that's all we get. 

And, our audience is of various levels. I don't want to talk over the heads of the rank beginners. I also don't want the more advanced folks to be bored.

Back to the drawing board. I change the class nearly every time we teach. 

p.s. I spent nearly 3 days re-writing the seminar handout. Take a look here: goo.gl/LAri0L

FMCA Rally at the Big "E" in Massachusetts

Kind of like you'll find two major drugstore chains with locations in the same block, the major RV rallies seem to be scheduling themselves near each other. So, we end up with two big rallies right in a row. We were at Escapade in Vermont from July 22-30, then the FMCA rally started August 3. Although I appreciate not having to criss-cross the country and arrange our whole year according to the rallies, it would be nice to have a little more time between the two. We enjoy the rallies and have fun, but we are also working pretty hard. We're exhausted by the end of a rally. Even more so at the end of two rallies back-to-back. Luckily, the grounds here at the Eastern States Exposition, provide for staying parked after the rally at $20/night. The rally was over on Saturday - now it's Monday and we're still here. The Internet was good enough for us to do our "Button" show on Sunday. This was episode #90 on Sync'ing Contacts.

From Essex Junction, Vermont we came pretty much straight here. We needed to get some printing done, and because of a dynamite FMCA discount at Office Depot/Office Max - we always look for them. Using Google Maps, we found that there are none in West Springfield, so we looked afield and found an Office Max in Albany, NY that we could route thru. They had a big parking lot so we just stayed there for the night while we waited for our printing job to get done.

I wonder how often Office Max hear's this: Them, "I'm sorry sir, but we won't be able to complete your order until tomorrow. We can't do it while you wait."  Us, "That's OK, we'll wait. Our bed is in your parking lot!"

We had planned to stay at a campground west of the rally for the couple of nights before, but when we got there, we saw no Verizon signal (or any other) so we simply turned around and kept on driving. They were able to accommodate us early at the Expo grounds - yay! We're all set. Let the rally begin!

Here was our schedule for the FMCA rally:

There's nothing quite like an RV rally. You are at home ... in your motorhome. Here's Jim grilling our dinner.

But, your neighborhood was just thrown together for a few days and includes hundreds of other RVs. In this case, about 1,300 others. We're here to work, but "work" is just a short walk from our RV door. There are friends and frolick galore, and even live entertainment most every night.

Our work started at 7am on the first morning, when people came to register for our one fee-based workshop on smartphone photography. Many of these people, like Chuck - in front - we know well and see at many rallies all over the country.

I think we overextended ourselves a bit at this rally. It's only 4 days long, and we did 7 of our seminars, Jim also sat on a panel for the Fulltime RVer's seminar - AND - we had our fee-based workshop for 30 people with 2.5 hours of teaching on smartphone photography. The weather was gorgeous all week, but warm, and the seminar facilities had no air conditioning. I think there is an extra stress that comes from trying to speak to a group over the roar of industrial-size fans used to keep us cool. One night we were in bed and sound asleep by 8 o'clock.

When we weren't in seminar, we were at our table being "Smartphone Help Desk." We love that! It's so good to work with people on their personal devices and show them how to accomplish what they want. And, see so many different phones teaches us a lot too!

One Teaches, Two  Learn

The smiling blonde to Jim's left is Joyce. We're so glad to have her helping us at these rallies! She is also helping us with our website. Thanks Joyce!

This is what we mean by a "Hands-on" class. aka "Learn by Doing" We teach how to use your smartphone's camera functions, and also how to use Google Photos for Storing, Organizing, and Sharing all your photos.

This is the "Honey, Tell Me Where To Go" seminar about Google Maps, and other software for Trip Planning

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2016 Escapade in Essex Junction, Vermont

The Escapade is an annual get together of the Escapees club. Last year it was in Tucson, AZ. We've been attending, and teaching our seminars there for many years - at least since 2010.

We knew we were going to be busy for most of the week. But I was determined to do some line dancing with the ever-cheerful Carol Hill. I made it the first morning and took pictures to prove it!

The first 2 days we were teaching a "learn-by-doing" class on smartphone photography. At the end of the class, everyone could make a little movie like my line-dancing one above. There's no better way to learn than doing! My favorite comment at the end of the class was a woman who said she sent the little movie she made to her grandson who asked, "Can you show me how to do that?"
What a proud grandma. It's normally her grandson who is teaching her!

Then came the main event and we taught 6 seminars:

All of the seminars drew a good crowd, but the most popular one this time around was the "Honey Tell Me Where To Go!" seminar. The topic is Trip-Planning, Navigation, and Mapping Memories. We demonstrated more on Google Maps than anything. It took a panorama to get the whole crowd. Here's the seminar handout, if you're interested.

We also did a live stream of our Google Photos seminar.

And, we had some fun too! Thanks to Bruce Fay for 'capturing' this photo!

Till next year Escapees!
Escapade 2017 will be in March in Tucson, AZ.

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West Virginia And Newmar Kountry Club Rally

As we drive around here and visit the local restaurants we keep saying we've got to come back here when we have more time.

This area of West Virginia is gorgeous and there are bike trails and lakes to kayak in.

But we're here working this time. Our seminars are going great and we're doing one on one help desk sessions for smartphone users.

We're also having great fun with the new Google photos here's a little movie that it put together.

And, here's the video from Jim and his quadcopter. It shows the rally grounds from an aerial point of view, as well as the Fireworks show on the last night.

FMCA Rally in Pomona

This is the 3d time we’ve presented seminars at the FMCA in Pomona. The first was in March, 2006 when we were still working for Coach Connect. The owners of Coach Connect didn’t even come to this one, they left us on our own to run the Wi-Fi hotspot and present the Wi-Fi seminars. The seminar coordinator also asked us to do an additional seminar on communications on the road. After that, Coach Connect didn’t go to the rallies any more, but the seminar coordinator (Mary Ann Crowley) still asked us to come and present anyway. The next time we went to Pomona was February 2008 we were Geeks on Tour by then and we gave Blogging, Picasa, Photo Story seminars in addition to Internet connections on the road. That was also the first time we saw Herman’s Hermits and loved them! So, we were extra excited this year that Herman’s Hermits were performing again.

Here we are presenting one of our seminars this year:

The special thing this year was that we enlisted help at our table. Our good friend Lynne flew down from Oregon and stayed with us. She was a great help both at our table during the day, and for having fun at night!

 

Here are the two Geeks on Tour and one ‘Geek for a Week” – Lynne always comes up with the best words!

We had a very special parking spot right by the seminar buildings. So we hosted happy hour a couple of evenings. Lots of friends here, Phil and Tracey of TechnoRV, Kim and Don of Harvest Hosts, Curtis of RVillage, and more.

Attendance was down this year, but we still had some nice seminars. Smartphones is the most popular right now. We teach basic terminology as well as demonstrating a few of the ‘oh-wow’ features like the ability to use the front-facing camera to put yourself into a picture that you’re taking of the audience. And, we had the Samsung All Cast device set up so that whatever was on our phone’s screen could be seen on the big screen projected to the audience.

I always especially like it when we teach hands-on workshops. We limit attendance to 20 and have them learn by doing. Here they’re exploring the features of their cameras by doing exercises we give them. Even if they already know the basics of the exercise, they discover other things in the process.

The weather was beautiful and everything went smoothly as planned. The best part for me was Herman’s Hermits playing again. Peter Noone may be getting older but he’s still just as cute as ever, and even cuter when he makes fun of himself for getting old. In one bit he said how exciting it was to be playing at the Fairplex in Pomona … he remembers having a discussion with fellow British musician Mick Jagger that “someday we’ll know we’ve made it, when we play the Fairplex in Pomona!” He had the audience roaring with laughter, and several of us standing in the aisles were dancing up a storm to the music. FUN time.