SHOT Show Reports, remember when?

[Jeff OTMG]

Hey guys, a lot of new faces around here, but still some of the old names I recognize. I have not been around much for the last 5 years with the career change there is just no time. Not even to lurk. For those of you who remember I use to try to provide a little advanced information about the gun industry from my annual trips to the SHOT Show on the shotshowreports.com website. I guess I was one of the first bloggers, before we knew that was what it was called. I started that around 1998 and continued until a few years ago. There got to be a bunch of other people doing reports from the SHOT Show and it started to take up so much of my time it really was not needed anymore.

I just booked reservations for my son and I to Las Vegas for the coming show. My son is now writer for Apple and he had an idea that might work for all of us, if you guys are interested. Rather than taking 8-11 hours to post a report everyday, and you guys not getting it until the next morning, we thought about Tweeting our way through the show. We can both post to the same account for near real time information. We can even do some photos when the camera Nazi's aren't hanging around. We thought about it for the last show, but we were already there when we discussed it. We would be posting as we go so anytime you check in you should see something fresh. The old site would get 20,000+ hits during the week of the show and about 35,000 in a two week period so I know that there was at least some interest in the old format. I think that we all had fun with just few negative comments. The downside is that Tweets are limited to 140 character strings, which is a blessing to me that it won't take as long, so maybe not as much detail as before. Probably no Shotties either, there seems to be fewer of them with the downturn in the economy anyway or maybe I am getting older.

So what do you think? Do you want a Twitter based account of the SHOT Show? Is it a good idea?

 

[Aguila Blanca]

Speaking only for myself ... it's a horrible idea.

I'd rather wait for full sentences and English.

 

[pax]

If you have a legitimate website (such as shotshowreports.com) you can go legitimate and get a press pass -- thus turning the "camera nazis" into allies rather than enemies. Then maybe you wouldn't need to use such an offensive term for someone just trying to do their job and enforce the rules of the privately run show.

pax

 

[Jeff OTMG]

I have been going to the show for about 25 years now and up until about 5 years ago you could take pictures freely with the models and new guns, but, when I started providing the info via the internet in 1998 or 1999 on the old ShooterTalk forum, I think that upset some of the gun journalists because you didn't have to wait 3-6 months for the magazine to come out. SHOT was just trying to control the flow of information. The info was posted here in 2000, but then I started using the photos on my own site. That was when the camera Nazis started showing up. Sorry, but that is how they were referred to in the beginning and I am not changing the terms to satisfy your PC sensitivity. Yes, I could get press credentials and I still have some of the press badge ribbons from the early years, but it is time consuming and expensive. I was doing it for free just to bring information to the posters and ended up giving up my fun time and money to post the info for some who didn't appreciate it. I am not willing to do that anymore, haven't been for a couple of years and I thought this was a way to deliver the info to the shooting public early. I guess not. I will just keep it to myself.

I just noticed. I think that I see the problem. You have a for profit online site and you may be one of the people that my reports step on. My info was stuff that the magazines didn't have as well as some of the stuff that showed up months later. I had photos of the RAMI about 3 years before CZ released it. I posted photos of the Kahr .45 with a steel frame that they still haven't made. And don't forget the question of the as yet released scandium frame PPK and TPH. Then there was the Rohrbaugh. I just thought that people wanted the info early, I wasn't trying to make money off it. My website had nothing for sale and no clickable ad links.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

Jeff, if you rate press credentials, they are free -- and so is admission to the show. There is nothing expensive OR time consuming about it.

Don't know who your remark about having a for-profit web site was aimed at, but it certainly wasn't me. I don't have any web site at all. I'm just a senior citizen who doesn't wish to strain his brain trying to make sense out of arbitrarily truncated microbursts of information that have been edited or formatted to fit into a tweet. As I wrote above -- speaking strictly for myself, I have less than zero interest. I refuse to read posts on forums when they are written in TXT MSG 4MT, and I am equally opposed to seeing tweets used for any purpose other than tweeting other twits.

 

[aarondhgraham]

3,550 posts?,,,

And he still hasn't learned manners?

~shaking head slowly~

We're kinda fond of PAX Jeff,,,
You may leave again,,,
No hard feelings.

.

 

[pax]

Heh...

Jeff,

1) Press credentials are free. And when you qualify for them, you get free access to the show. Following the rules you agree to abide by when you obtain a ticket is thus actually cheaper than cheating. (And the line for press credentials at the show is almost invariably shorter than the line for everyone else too, so it's also less of a hassle.)

2) My 'for profit' website isn't. It's www.corneredcat.com -- a free site which takes no ads and doesn't even have a tip jar. See http://www.corneredcat.com/Reviews/shot-2009.aspx for my own (free, early, and online) SHOT Show report from 2009. Didn't do it in 2010 as my husband and I made the insane decision to try to squeeze in a bring-the-kids family vacation immediately after the show. Hilarious but frantic comedy of errors ensued!

3) My day job as the editor of Concealed Carry Magazine (a magazine that takes no advertising) does indeed involve a print magazine that runs a brief SHOT Show report every year. To the best of my knowledge, we've never gained or lost a subscriber over that single article, so it's not as if I'm frantically protecting that territory either. And the report in CCM often points to early online reports for additional details that won't fit into the print magazine.

But if you'd rather waste your money by cheating on the rules, and insinuate rude things about someone who suggests a way you could avoid trouble while saving money, well, I guess that's up to you. Have a good day.

pax

 

[JT-AR-MG42]

Gotta go with Aguila on this one, but for different reasons. He doesn't like all the acronyms, I don't know what most of them mean.

Tweets must be for high speed internet. I can't even read my own news page because it is so 'busy' that it takes forever to load.

I for one though would really enjoy some first hand reports from the SHOT show from someone with the funds to go and free time to write about it. New TPH's sound pretty interesting for one.

As far as pictures, I would just respect their wishes as you would like yours to be and say the heck with photos. Good descriptions do the same.

JT

 

[johnbt]

""the old ShooterTalk forum"

The good old days. Hi. You write it, we'll read it.

 

[Jeff OTMG]

aarondhgraham - Yes, those posts were from a long time ago, but the manners comment coming from someone who has been here for 9 months seems odd since you never saw any of my postings until this offer to provide some info like I use to.

Aguila Blanca - I have been going to SHOT every year since 1985 or 86 and admission has never been free. In fact it was more expensive for the press pass because you were able to attend press day on the range the day before the show. Press may be free now, I don't know, I couldn't tell by the show site. They do have a new internet category that wasn't there three years ago that would allow me to use my blog site, but I haven't used it for some time even though I still have the URL. It is incredibly time consuming. I would spend 8-11 hours writing every might after the show and uploading photos to the page. It was a pain, that is why I stopped.

JT-AR-MG42 - I don't know the short hand text stuff either. It would all be written out, just short messages. You would read them on the Twitter website, not on your phone.

johnbt - For me ShootersTalk started in 1997 and where we met Lou Alessi (RIP) and Lew Danielson. Do you know I thought that Lew was a marketing guy for a couple of years. I would drop by the Crimson Trace booth and the second year it dawned on me that the people in the booth were tripping all over themselves for this guy. Finally found out that he owned the company. Mark THG was there and he even started making a holster that I designed. Mark is a cop in Conroe, TX now.

 

[LukeA]

I think a Twitter live report from SHOT Show would be a good idea, especially if you include pictures with your tweets.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

Gotta go with Aguila on this one, but for different reasons. He doesn't like all the acronyms, I don't know what most of them mean.

That's a major aspect of why I don't like them ... that, plus the fact they are more difficult to "read" than actual words.

Too many commonly-used acronyms have multiple meanings, especially in the gun world. FTF. Failure to feed, or failure to fire? FTE. Failure to extract, or failure to eject.

EDC. Edward Davis Conners? Who is he and why should I be seeing a reference to him in a post about guns?

That aside, tweets are tweets. They are not really intended to convey content, they are intended to allow one person (the tweeter) to tell scads of other people (the twits) that he/she is still alive, and somewhere on the planet. Beyond that, they are useless and annoying.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

Aguila Blanca - I have been going to SHOT every year since 1985 or 86 and admission has never been free. In fact it was more expensive for the press pass because you were able to attend press day on the range the day before the show. Press may be free now, I don't know,...

Well, I do know, because I attended SHOT 2007 and SHOT 2009 as press, and both my credentials and admission were free. So your statement that admission for press has never been free is obviously incorrect, and you might consider that it's generally unwise to make blanket statements about things on which you are not well-informed.

 

[JT-AR-MG42]

Thanks for the twitter tip Jeff. I will look it up and do look forward to reports.

Good thing it is not on my phone as I have text and internet turned off. Too expensive for too small a screen. Talk about eyestrain. Soon the phones will be the size of the laptops and we'll be back where we started with the analog phones!

Thanks for your efforts in getting the latest out. 'The Rifleman' understandably covers it's advertisers first and foremost in it's report.

JT

 

[Raven Armament]

Don't know how much information you can share with Twitter. I only use Twitter to offer special discounts and offers to those that follow the account. Beyond that it doesn't have much use for my business.