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MACNA 2018 - Las Vegas - September 7-9

Are you Attending

  • Total voters
    17
Having a great time at MACNA
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So MACNA come and gone, gotta say I didn't quite as enjoy it as much as San Diego and I think that was because for San Diego I was there having fun in San Diego AND going to MACNA, Las Vegas is just not my destination for fun however your mileage obvious may vary some people do have a lot of fun there. Even if I spent all 3 days I feel like I would have been bored there unless I spent a lot of money and that's not my idea of fun in general.

That said everyone who goes has different reasons for doing so, for me it's because I'm a tech junkie I want to see first hand what's new out there, maybe before it becomes new (and in the case of things like Mindstream... WAY before... *zing!*) others might want to go to the wealth of discussions that they have by various people, while there were some topics I like seeing (I'll always watch a Richard Ross topic even if I've already seen it) for the most part I wasn't really into to many of them for the day I was there (definitely didn't care about a meet & great with the ATM guys).

One thing I didn't like though is it seemed the talks overlapped each other, and not in the way you'd think i.e. choose one to do or the other, it was sit in on one talk, then half way through that talk another was starting. I would have probably actually preferred making a choice between one or the other, rather than possibly seeing part of one just so I can see the other.

Of the tech goodies they didn't have a whole lot that made my day, I mean yeah the GHL/Royal Exclusiv booth had their products but nothing new (although I think the price on the Mitras lights went up $50 (I thought they were $749), Neptune booth didn't have much new except the Triton which was not in San Diego.

Some of the overseas Asian vendors I like to look at to due to their "knock off" nature of products, however some of them REALLY need to get better people manning their booths. I saw the Cetus 2 LED fixture because I noticed it on the ReefBuilders channel, Jake Adams seemed into it (hopefully it wasn't a shill commercial for the company), however the vendor was like "you read pamphlet then come back if you have questions" ... seriously? You need to sell me on this product, to try and get me to want to have it, not show me a sheet and be done with me enjoying the rest of your "Vacation". Meanwhile there was a controller from a company called eKoral who walked me through everything in their controller and was obviously serious about pushing their product into the market by talking to the people who will buy it, it was very similar to other controllers, had a power bar, a fairly nice user interface on a tablet/phone, a super cool water height detector, not just a "high trigger" it actually fired off ultrasonic pulses (or something) and reported back the actual height of the water, so that was cool. They also had a dosing system and when I asked how accurate their claims were on dosing the guy was all ready to show me, had a scale accurate to 1/100th a gram and had a program setup to dose 10mL and fired it off... when it stopped it was at 11.2grams so a little more than 10% off and he did tell me that was part of the software kinks they were still working out, but I was still happy he was willing to go this far with me. That said the controller package with 4 probes, the power bar, and water sensor was like $800... ouch (see next paragraph) and unfortunately it's a big problem to get established in this particular market due to a certain Goliath

Sometimes there are companies that have collaborations of booths (probably due to expense), Zetlight booth had a neat little "UFO" style multichip array (think Kessil) not sure if it was that company though, I do have a pamphlet from them though :D. Not sure how much they cost though, which ultimately is going to sway me into looking more into it or not. Cobalt Aquatics (think Maxijet) had a really cool Kessil AP700 knockoff with a few other features like a blue ring around the main light that acts as a moonlight, and a bar of warm white(?) in the middle do knock down the blueness of the light, a little more power (200W I think), but the price tag on it? $799, and again think Maxijet, your knockoff better be better than the original.

AI was showing off it's Nero pump, this is a thin flat disc that you can angle slightly in the tank. Although the tank was completely empty (well 3 pumps) so it's really hard to get a feel for effective it will be. Kessil's new A360X was on display, think is really thin. Supposedly it's brighter but I had nothing to compare it to. The Aquatics Life guy was fun to talk to as well (T5 fixture that you mount your LED in between), as he had the Cetus2 light (from the pamphlet vendor :D). Talked with the Aqueon guy and found out why you can't get the 40 breeder for $1/gallon anymore and that's because the housing market is really putting a crunch on the availability of glass, so for larger tanks with a bit larger glass it's getting more expensive to source (also why a side could be tempered even though they make no such claims). Sicce guy pissed me off because I was talking to him about needing a replacement pump for an old skimmer, he asked which one, I said ATi, he proclaimed I need a new skimmer, I told him I need a new pump, he said I should get an eShopps skimmer, as it turns out they use Sicce pumps, and also found out sometime later that if a store wants to carry JUST Sicce products they cost a certain amount, however if they carry Sicce and eShopps products the same things are cheaper, so yeah dirty little secret of the industry (and I found out from a rep of one of said companies too)

Overall I had fun, but I wouldn't do it again if it went to Vegas, and that's because Vegas is not my type of fun to have. San Diego sure, great LA area, sure, Bay Area!? :)D... yeah there's a pipe dream considering getting people to run the club is like pulling teeth). But is something people should experience at least once if you can, who knows you may find you you love it :D
 
Yeah I wasn't pretending to be anything but a tourist there and don't get me wrong others did enjoy themselves, but I just feel that I'm not the type of person to truly "enjoy" Vegas even if I was there overnight. :D
 
Ok make me feel old and untechy... I had to google what the hell FOMO meant as soon as two people used it as a term :D

And yeah it is Orlando next year, but man they couldn't have done it at a place cheaper than a Disney World resort? I mean it's not like the Vegas one was prime strip casino, they got one that was somewhat close but very reasonably priced which they probably couldn't have done at say Caesar's or any of those other "Prime" locations. Scary thought would be that the Disney place actually is one of the cheaper ones though!
 
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