I love Sarah’s music and think she’s easily one of Canada’s great talents of the last generation. So the chance to shoot her was an opportunity I wasn’t going to miss – especially with being accredited and having some good publicist friends at CMW (as opposed to when major artists are usually out on tour, freelance photogs like myself sometimes stand a better chance getting hit by lightening than being accredited at venues like the Air Canada Centre.)

So I wasn’t going to miss my shot with Sarah. I had already learned, her performance would be short (2-3 songs max) and would lead off the Canadian Music & Broadcast Industry Awards Gala – so staking claim to a good photo position would be key. Photographers were already warned they would have to shoot from far back in the room – as to not block the tables situated close the stage. Since I already had my mind set on having to get as-close-as-possible to Ms. McLachlan’s performance, let’s just say when the lights went down and thanks to an understanding Gil Moore (yeah, the Triumph drummer) I managed to secure a most coveted shooting position. [all photos Richard Budman]

I was very interested in seeing what Windows 7 was all about. I’m actually still running Windows XP on my desktop and netbook. XP has been a very stable OS for me and the suite of software I need to work with and my experience with Windows Vista was so bad, it spooked me off upgrading for a long while (a Vista experience I couldn’t help but mention to the Microsoft legend himself, Mr. Bill Gates when he came through Toronto earlier this year.)

But I had been hearing good things about Windows 7 so I knew it was time to take a hard look at the OS and when the invite for the #InTheCloud event came from the Windows Canada team, I figured it would be a good time. (Well that. And, they said we also could ride in a helicopter!)

To demonstrate the power of cloud computing across Windows Live networks and Windows 7 the #InTheCloud event had four distinct demos set-up with experts each doing there thing. The first demo, was all about Windows 7 OS on mobile. Being an iPhone guy (and also somebody very intrigued right now about the Android platform,) I really didn’t see anything during the Windows mobile demo that impressed me. The guy certainly knew his stuff – the Microsoft experts were actually one of best things about the day for me. But a Windows 7 mobile app store? I wondered how much could really be in there. (Yeah, I was probably being a bit of an iPhone snob, either way, I was anxious to move onto the next demo station.)

The next stop was showing off the photo and video editing features in Windows 7. Now, it’s rare that I don’t like firing up my Adobe Creative suite when working on projects – but even I have to admit the editing apps built into Windows 7 are pretty damn impressive. I was most interested to see how editing, encoding, and uploading to social sites like Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook were built so natively into the applications. In designing Windows 7, it appears Microsoft was listening to people, and people were saying LOUDLY, “we just want to be able to simply edit and upload our stuff to social networks.”

The last two Windows 7 demos talked about office productivity and home entertainment. And it was here I was seeing the operating system really come alive and position itself as an OS that can be the centre of your home entertainment needs and can further interact seemlessly with your content files no matter where they sit – local / networked drives, or the cloud (and bringing internet connected content into our living rooms – and on to our big screen TV’s is something I’m very interested in.)

But really, since the theme of the day was all about personal cloud computing – I’m glad the best thing I took from the event (yes, including even the awesome helicopter ride) was an introduction to Windows Live Skydrive.

Maybe because my heart (and head) has been in my Google apps account for so long, I wasn’t even aware of this fantastic (and free!) offering from Microsoft. Huge online storage space (25 gigs) for all types of files and online versions of Office Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. I especially loved how your online skydrive can be synced and shown with your other local/networked drives folder in Windows 7 – but this drive sits in the cloud!

The Helicopter that took us in the cloud.
iPhone photo as we head south towards downtown Toronto.

I love participating in these types of innovative product events – not just seeing what’s happening during the actual event, but how the event reverberates with people who attend and how they in turn, share it across social media with their personal networks. Here, I thought adding the helicopter ride a great move for the event (think the team at High Road Communications helped put the Windows day together)

Lesson of the day for me: You want to get people twittering about your event – take them up for a spin around Toronto in a helicopter will surely help do the trick.
The only other time I remember being in a helicopter was as a kid in a ride at the EX (and it certainly was sans camera.) So this helicopter trip seemed like a first for me. I have never considered myself someone afraid of heights or flying, but even I admit, when our pilot took the heli for the u-turn around the CN Tower I felt some butterflies in the stomach (I pretty much silently prayed for the best, and just kept shooting as I was taken with how beautifully the sun was hitting the tower.)

I shot mainly with my DSLR while up in the air. But also used my iPhone like here when cruising directly over Rogers Centre (thought it funny the only time my Rogers 3G network signal went out while in the air was when flying over Rogers Centre

City Hall, Nathan Phillips Square on Queen st. and University ave. areas of Toronto.

I shared the helicopter ride around Toronto with vblogger extraordinaire @seanward & @Chels_McD

Looking east while crossing over Highway 401 as we head north back to land at the Canadian Air & Space Museum.

IS YOUR FIRM LOOKING FOR A SOCIAL MEDIA ROCKSTAR? CALL RICHARD BUDMAN!