THIS SESSION IS OPEN TO BOTH BALTIC BLAST AND NORTHERN LIGHT ATTENDEES

SPECIAL: Rock Bottom Leadership
Speaker: Martin Hedley

Whether you run a company, family, or community organization your ability to lead is crucial. In this seminar, Martin Hedley, a Chief Operating Officer and Mac Fanatic who has worked with leadership development for 20 years, will show you the results of recent research -- data that will blow your current ideas of leadership development out of the water. Learn:
• the 16 competencies that really matter
• the five fatal flaws
• the two stages of leadership development
• how much the bottom 20% is costing you
• what competencies you need to develop

If you're nice, he'll give you a personal 30 minute coaching session that fits your needs precisely (not nice -- 60 minutes).

This session will examine the core elements of Apple's entry-level music application, GarageBand — loops, software instruments (MIDI), real instruments (digital audio), and effects. In this session, you'll learn how to configure your Mac to record with the built-in instruments as well as capture your voice and such real instruments as guitar and bass. Additionally, you'll learn how to find your way around the GarageBand interface, create simple arrangements with the included loops, muck with your music with the built-in editor, mix your composition, export it to another application, and incorporate your finished work into an iPhoto slide show and iMovie.

This session begins by offering techniques for tweaking your compositions within GarageBand. We'll dive into the finer points of MIDI- and audio editing, learn about the advantages of editing controller data, and mutate the built-in effects in musical (and not-so-musical) ways. We'll also discuss methods for overcoming GarageBand's import and export limitations — providing tips for importing music files not originally intended for GarageBand as well as adding third-party loops and instruments to the program. We'll step out of the garage to see how GarageBand can interact with other music applications such as Propellerhead's Reason and Apple's Logic Express and Logic Audio. Throughout the session you'll learn something of what it takes to make a piece of music "musical."

iMovie is a terrific tool for making home movies, but beneath its gentle exterior is a reasonably powerful video editor that's capable of creating professional-looking instructional videos. In this session you'll learn how to put together such a video with the help of your camcorder, digital camera, iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand, and a couple of inexpensive third-party utilities. The session will cover planning and scripting, asset acquisition and management, basic and advanced iMovie editing techniques, proper use of effects and transitions, narration tips, and preparation of your iMovie for distribution to the web, disc, and across a network.

In this session we'll explore the many faces of iTunes — music player, audio converter, music manager, Internet radio receiver, and network jukebox. In addition to unraveling all that is iTunes, we'll take a side trip to the iTunes Music Store and cock a keen eye at utilities that can enhance the iTunes experience — third-party music encoders and helpful AppleScripts.

The iPod is far more than this century's Sony Walkman. Beyond its abilities to store and play weeks of music, the iPod is a personal information manager and digital wallet. In this session we'll look at all things iPod and examine its relationship with iTunes (and how to make the most of that relationship by constructing playlists for managing a massive music collection). We'll offer techniques for getting the most life out of your iPod and discuss ways to deal with the device when the music inexplicably stops.

Join this highly entertaining session as NY Times columnist David Pogue makes Apple's newest Mac OS X operating system — Tiger version 10.4 — sing, dance, and walk on its head. Witness a parade of undocumented shortcuts, decipher the unfamiliar Mac OS X folder structure, and discover the power of the Unix system that powers the whole thing. Based on his book "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual," Tiger Edition, this session is, in particular, a life preserver tossed to anyone who's interested in finding out which of the 150 new Tiger features are worth learning, and which old features wound up in new places.

This one is really a blast. Armed with a camcorder and a laptop, David Pogue (author of the bestselling "iMovie & iDVD: The Missing Manual") will attempt to make a complete digital movie, complete with dialogue, characters, sound effects, and music, using good-natured audience members as actors. In the process, you'll learn the essentials of digital moviemaking, including music, effects, and, of course, technical workarounds; the results can be exported as a QuickTime film, posted on the Web, or burned onto an actual DVD. This session will focus not just on iMovie and your camcorder, but the Hollywood techniques that separate amateur camcorder and production work from polished, professional efforts. Be prepared to be educated, entertained — and filmed.

He'll even post the finished movie on his Website for attendees to show off after their return home!

Maybe you've already mastered your digital camera, and even filled its memory card with photos from your cruise. Now what?

In this tippy, tricky session, David Pogue, author of "iPhoto: The Missing Manual," takes you far deeper into iPhoto than you've thought it possible to go. He shows you how to master the underlying folder structure of iPhoto's digital shoebox on your hard drive, making it possible to back up, split, and merge photo libraries; how to use plug-ins and add-ons to bolster iPhoto's printing, Web-page export, and emailing features; how to modify the layouts of iPhoto's spectacular photo books; and enough additional tips and tricks to make give you the digital-photography bug worse than you've ever had it before.

Best of all, he'll show you how to use iPhoto and Photoshop as springboards to do more with your photos: edit and crop them for the greatest impact, create Web-page galleries of them, build musical slide shows on DVD for unforgettable gifts, and much more.

Whether you've got a digital camcorder or just a stack of old videotapes, it's time to make the move to DVD — and no computer burns DVDs better than the Mac. From the basics of converting old analog videotapes to digital format to getting pro-quality results out of Apple's low-cost iDVD, we'll get you burning DVDs in no time.

The Mac's the prime DVD-creation platform, but what if you want to go beyond the basics of iMovie and iDVD? Apple's DVD Studio Pro lets regular people make Hollywood-class DVDs. This session will give you tips on video compression, designing interfaces and burning discs using DVD Studio Pro, choosing DVD-R media, and more.

iMovie is a powerful tool, but it's just the beginning. Get a peek at all the great available iMovie add-ons that can take your iMovies to the next level — effects plug-ins, titling apps, cool Photoshop tricks, hardware gadgets, and more! Plus for those who really want to push the envelope, get a crash course in Apple's Final Cut Express.

There is no denying Keynote, Apple's elegant and easy to use replacement for PowerPoint, is a great application. However, just like with PowerPoint, AppleWorks' presentation module or any other presentation software package, there is confusion. Starting from where to begin and running right up to when and how to end your presentation, there are so many questions to ask and have answered. Here's where Unlocking Keynote comes in, and because of their many similarities, users of other presentation software should profit just as fully.

We'll show you where and how to start, how to plan your presentation, how to spice it up, as well as how not to overdo it. We'll even show you how to control it, guide it and end it. We'll help you take your presentation where no presentation has gone before. Perhaps most important to know and understand your place in the presentation.

NORTHERN LIGHT SEMINARS

NOTE: Baltic Blast attendees may participate in
• Northern Light Seminars 1, 2, and 3 for a
• conference fee of $395, or
• individual seminars for $149 per seminar.
Photography: Art and Craft is open to all and there is no charge.

Join master photographer Bill Durrence of Blue Pixel in a modular course on digital photography. This workshop presents three digital photography seminars in a well-crafted sequential workflow. Each four-hour seminar stands on its own, and provides an integral building block of your digital photography skills.

Photography: Art and Craft
Friday, July 1 (90 minutes)
(This session is open to all Baltic Blast attendees)

What does it take to make great pictures? Bill Durrence demystifies the process for you. We'll survey the digital photography terrain in an overview of the topics and key concepts we will be covering in the more extensive classes the rest of the week.

• What makes an effective photograph
• The importance of a well organized workflow

Light is the primary subject of all of our photographs. In this illuminating, four-hour seminar, we'll discuss the properties of light and how to use an understanding of light plus the various camera controls and features to produce a technically proficient photograph.

• Understanding the properties of light
• Effective use of traditional camera controls
• Metering and exposure
• F stop/depth of field
• Shutter speed/motion control
• ISO
• Understanding digital camera menus
• Resolution
• File format and JPEG compression
• White balance
• Tone control
• Sharpening
• Putting it all together when shooting pictures

How do you put a little bit of soul into your pictures? Having control of your equipment is necessary, but only the first step.

In this seminar we will discuss how to move beyond technically well-executed documentation photography to exciting images that allow us to share, in an artful and interesting way, the experience of the moment we chose to record.

• Human vs. camera vision
• Perspective and point of view
• Camera position and lens choice
• Understanding the frame
• Organizing the visual elements
• Keep it simple
• Design tools for "drawing" the photograph
• Clues to three-dimensionality
• Exploring the subject
• Photographing people
• Travel photography techniques
• Close Up photography techniques

You've captured images in your camera. Now what? Digital photography has given us some wonderful tools for improving our photographic skills and output. At the same time it has added a number of new technical issues we must learn to manage in order to enjoy our pictures. Digital workflow — the process of digital photography from click to display — is our focus in this seminar.

We will discuss the essentials of a good workflow that allows us to work smoothly and efficiently, producing the best results for output while maintaining control of, preservation of, and access to our image files.

• Good image capture
• Downloading and organizing files
• Asset management
• Archiving
• Cataloging
• Color management
• Monitor calibration and profiling
• Understanding color spaces
• Basic editing techniques
• Prepping for good output
• Saving your work
• Sizing
• Sharpening
• Printer dialogue boxes for best results
• Using printer profiles

Enjoy the morning light and join Bill Durrence as he shares techniques, tips, and tricks of photographing urban landscapes in this roving, hands-on tutorial. The ring wall and historic streets of the UNESCO World Heritage Site city of Visby are our laboratory. Attendance is limited to 10 attendees and participation is only open to those taking at least one Northern Light seminar.

Visby's DBW Botanical Garden and the streets of Visby are our workshop for a tutorial on closeup photography. Bill Durrence will cover approaches to optimizing closeup photographs, and give us artistic and technical pearls for capturing fine images. Attendance is limited to 10 attendees and participation is only open to those taking at least one Northern Light seminar.

We'll cover take-away points on cameras, composition, and preserving your images. In addition, Bill Durrence will discuss, in brief, "the Rules", and how and when to break the rules.

After a week of digital photography in splendid surroundings, we'll submit samples of our work to the group, and Bill will offer his comments and hints on further refining our work.