Every year after the Macstock conference I like to talk about what I learned and what the experience was like. This year, the 10th-anniversary event was even more amazing than ever. As Dave Hamilton said on the Mac Geek Gab, Macstock is like camp for nerds.
Mike Potter continues to run a fantastic event and he took things up a notch this year with a great new venue. Last year we were in the very quaint town of Woodstock, Illinois (which is where Macstock got its name), and the theater we were in had a lot of charm. But that charm came at the sacrifice of the size of the venue. Because it was so small, Mike actually had to turn people away and it made me very sad that there were people who wanted to attend and could not.
This year he moved the conference to Crystal Lake, Illinois which is a smidge closer to Chicago making it only about 45 minutes from the airport. He held the conference at an IHG-owned Holiday Inn which is also the conference center. That meant that all of the attendees were able to stay at the same hotel and go to the conference without driving back and forth. The result was that we had around 100 attendees this year which was great.
The other big change Mike made was he added an extra day. The conference still ran on Saturday and Sunday, but for an extra fee you could come in a day early and on Friday go to workshops to learn specific things. I was lucky enough to be chosen to do one of the workshops, and I chose to do Mac Tiny Tips. I couldn’t go through anywhere near as many as I’ve written but I got a good chunk done and I was able to give them a QR code to go learn all of the others. It was nice to be able to tell them they didn’t have to take notes because they are all documented.
If you’d like to watch the session, Steve recorded it and posted it for all to enjoy:
We also had Mike Schmitz teaching his workflow for journaling that he uses for his path to personal growth. It wasn’t so much about the tools but how to use them to get the most out of journaling.
Our very own Marty Jencius (aka Drunk Nick Nolte in the live chat room) did a really well received presentation on how to use AI for peak productivity. He gave us specific techniques on how to achieve different goals.
Finally, Mike Potter taught how to get started with Ecamm Live to stream really slick-looking video.
While all of the workshops were great, the room lighting was a real challenge. The rooms are lit more like a ballroom with overhead lighting and those lights reflected off the screen. This was oddly more problematic if the information being projected was in dark mode. But it was still really hard to see the live demos like my tiny tips and Mike’s instruction on Ecamm. Hopefully, that’s something to have improved for next year.
One thing happened during the workshops that I will never forget. Picture this: I’m up there doing my Mac Tiny Tips, and people are asking questions and offering new solutions to the same problems I set up. I know most of the people who attend Macstock, and I definitely know the ones who speak up a lot. So I’m calling on people by name. But there’s one woman in the back of the room I don’t know so while I’m calling on her as she contributes, I didn’t know her name. Finally, while repeating her question so the folks watching the recording later would be able to hear the question, I asked for her name. I’ll let you hear what happened next.
For those of you who haven’t been listening for all 19 years, Kaylee was a huge contributor to the podcast for many years. She came to the live show, she did recordings for us, she was on Chit Chat Across the Pond with me, and she had her own podcast. But as happens with podcasting, she drifted away and we lost touch. After several years gone, she popped back up in a text chat with me fairly recently and we rekindled our friendship. What I did not know is that she had moved back to the United States from Japan and that’s how she was able to come to Macstock and surprise us. Steve and I spent a lot of time with Kaylee, introduced her to everyone and we all had a blast together. As I said, realizing she was there in person was such a great moment that I’ll remember forever.
Speaking of the NosillaCastaways, we took a family photo that included most of the folks attending. That was fun, but what we did next was even more fun.
We had all of the NosillaCastaways yell something all at once:
It was great fun to do and Bart sure got a kick out of it!
Saturday was filled with terrific presentations with the theme of Level Up. One of my favorites was Jill from the Northwoods teaching organizational bliss with Notion. She’s been teaching me a lot about Notion over the last couple of years but she showed off her mad skills at the conference. She’s a very engaging presenter and has her own style that’s just awesome.
On Saturday night, Kelly Guimont hosted a karaoke event that was a lot of fun. The big surprise for me was when Jeff Gamet and Kelly got up to the mic as they were handed a song to sing written by NosillaCastaway John Ormbsy, aka NASAnut in the live chatroom. The song is called, “NosillaCast Island”, sung to the theme of Gilligan’s Island. Steve is worried we’ll get a takedown notice on our YouTube channel because the song includes the background music of the real Gilligan’s Island. Instead, I present to you, my a cappella version of NosillaCast Island.
NosillaCast Island
Ok, maybe I shouldn’t give up my podcasting career to go into singing, but I had fun trying to sing it!
Now we might have stayed up a bit later than we should have on Saturday night doing karaoke, because I was first up on stage on Sunday morning. I wasn’t sure my topic would really resonate with people, but I got a lot of positive feedback on it. The message I wanted to send for the conference theme of Level Up, was to encourage the audience to learn new things with their Macs – especially if it’s hard for them. Dr. Maryanne Garry has talked to us in the past about how learning things that are hard for you can help you maintain your current brain plasticity.
If you’d like to watch this talk, Steve recorded it and posted it online as well.
I want to call out Marty again for his interesting and interactive talk on how to guide others to do troubleshooting. After giving us ideas on how to help others figure out their own solutions, he put up a chart that had two stories on it – one for the left side of the room and one for the right side. We had quiet time to read the case, and then we hollered out which of his solutions might help the person described. It was a great way to learn what he was trying to teach us.
One of the things I enjoyed about this exercise was that Kaylee and I disagreed on the solutions. The case study on our side of the room was about a woman who was hesitant to do upgrades because one time she had lost data when she did an upgrade. Kaylee thought it would be helpful to have her turn off automatic upgrades, but I disagreed (quite loudly) that this was exactly the kind of person who needs to have auto-updates turned on. We continued to debate this topic throughout the weekend and it was great fun.
This happened quite a few times during the conference, and it got me thinking a super fun segment for the NosillaCast would be, “Kaylee and Allison Disagree”. I’m still working on convincing her to do it with me.
Kelly Guimont did a very unusual talk because, well, Kelly. She started by explaining that studies have shown that we can pay attention better if we can do some sort of fiddly motion with our hands while listening. Fidget spinners and doodling are great examples. But she suggested that crocheting would be a productive thing to do that would also help you pay attention.
So then she passed out a ball of yarn and a crochet hook to every attendee, and taught us how to crochet! I happen to be an avid crocheter, so I was enlisted to be a roving helper getting people unstuck as they tried to figure out how to crochet. When you’re first starting, you’re convinced that you need at least one more hand to do it.
My favorite new crocheter is a man named Bill who was so absolutely proud of his single chain of crocheting, that I took a picture of him.
I found him delightful for another reason.
Every year, Wally Cherwinski hosts the Macstock Film Festival where he solicits short videos from attendees. Unfortunately, he and Wendy had to pull out of the conference at the last minute so instead, Chuck Joiner did the introductions. Steve contributed a terrific video about our trip to Antarctica, as seen through the eyes of Rico the penguin from the movie Madagascar. Our friend Ron is Rico’s valet, and he allowed us to bring Rico to meet his brothers and sisters in Antarctica. You can watch Steve’s video at the link in the shownotes. It’s delightful.
Now let’s get back to the delightful Bill. He got up on stage with Chuck and explained that when he turned 80, he decided that he needed to force himself to learn new things. Exactly like what I talked about in my presentation! But get this, one of the things he did to stretch his brain was to switch from Windows to the Mac! Now I understand why he was so excited during my Mac Tiny Tips workshop!
He went on to explain to Chuck that when he heard about the film festival, he decided to learn how to make a slideshow movie, how to do transitions, how to add music, and how to add titles to the movie. I totally want to be Bill when I grow up.
While Bill held up his end of the age spectrum, one of the things I was really pleased to see was how many young people were there. The age demographic definitely moved younger this year and you need that for a movement to keep going.
On Saturday night, Dave Hamilton, Pilot Pete, and Adam Christianson did a live Mac Geek Gab with a stump the geek session and it was awesome as they always are.
There are so many stories and things that happened and things I learned that I can’t possibly hope to encapsulate them in one little article, but I can tell you we were all very sad when it was over and started making our plans for attending again next year. If there’s any way you can get to the Chicago area next July, I highly encourage you to attend Macstock. You won’t meet a more welcoming and inclusive group of people all hoping to learn and make new friends.
It was my first time too. Also my First time in meeting so many people. I chit chat with or comment like this.
My review. talks were great I love learning new Mac tricks. the Hotel was nice, the wifi. well. it wasn’t great but thankfully I had cell service.. The after hours. was the best part in my humble opinion. I didn’t really notice, I was sleep deprived.
Great to finally Meet Allision, Steve, Corky , chuck, the Daves, The BOBS and everyone else there. Next year Im grabbing phone numbers