Las Vegas-Ropes Course Style

I have spent the last few days in Las Vegas, at a convention for ropes course professionals, of all people.  It provides a stark contrast between the type of people who usually frequent casinos, and people who are fit enough for doing serious work at heights.  Casinos are full of people smoking and drinking, filling out oversized chairs in front of slot machines.  Ropes courses are run by people who get looks of exercise, and stay in shape to be able to climb effectively.  It is easy to identify who is here for the conference, even without our distinctive name tags.  And most of them don't have enough money to be doing much gambling, although that seems to be changing.

Ropes course used to be an extension of camp or education programs, which are traditionally not highly profitable enterprises.  So the budgets involved were relatively low across the board, limiting the market for any expensive products.  With the development of newer high volume adventure parks, and huge canopy tours, there is a lot more money in the industry than there used to be.  New extremely expensive products are being released that there would have had zero potential market five years ago at their price point.  But the public expects everything to be idiot-proof and "safe," so that increases the costs by an order of magnitude.  The engineering that goes into some to this gear is truly brilliant, but seemingly unnecessary with a little common sense.

We are at the Red Rock Resort, which is miles from the Strip, so it is a self contained entity.  Besides the hotel casino, and of course the conference center, there are a variety of restaurants, a bowling alley, and a 16 theater movie complex with an IMAX screen.  So there are hundreds of outdoorsy people here, who won't have to step out from under the roof of the building for the entirety of the three or four days they are here.

It has been amusing to observe how different this experience has been from my annual trips to NAB.  It is at least a thousand times smaller, and I am attending as a participant instead of a presenter, so I am actually spending much of the time in lecture sessions.  It is not an industry I am recognized in, and I hardly know any of the people involved, so I have spent the whole time with complete strangers, which has been challenging.  Even though the broadcast technology industry is much larger, I have a much more recognized role, and respect from many of the key players.  So I rarely have a shortage of people to talk to, or a lack of possible topics to discuss.

I am one of the few people attending the event who is not here as part of a larger group or team, from their company or school.  Way too much of my traveling has been totally alone over the last few years.  And while I have been to NAB alone as well, I know enough people there by this point, that I have a much easier time.