"It's All MIDI..."

In January at CES in Las Vegas we launched our campaign to increase awareness of MIDI . As a CEA "Allied Association" we had a small booth at the entrance to the Gaming Showcase in the North Hall. 

Since we had only one person attending for MMA, we arranged to have Alan Parsons and Billy Bob Thornton talk about MIDI while we were out walking the show -- on video, that is, courtesy of KeyFax New Media's "Art and Science of Sound Recording" series of DVDs. 

As shown in the photo at left, we also partnered with MTV's Harmonix Music Systems to promote their Rock Band Network (RBN) which uses MIDI to allow bands to put their own music into the Rock Band game for online sale to Rock Band gamers. (See the article about Rock Band Network elsewhere on this web site.) Since people attending CES are more familiar with  music games than they are with MIDI, the Rock Band Network was a good way to introduce them to MIDI. 

We had printed copies of our Introduction to MIDI booklet for those who wanted to know more about MIDI, but mostly we directed people to our web site.

We also told people about some of the MIDI products being exhibited at the show, including the You Rock Guitar, and the Gambridge Z-1 hybrid guitar.