I just got back from a video shoot in Vienna for Hewlett Packard. The event was HP DISCOVER, a big trade show which brings a lot of important people together. It’s a great opportunity to interview HP customers, executives and industry movers-and-shakers because they’re all there, in one spot.

The video production itself was fairly unremarkable. I worked as a behind-camera director, meaning I was responsible for directing the production as well as shooting. The lighting and audio crew were Austrian, but of course it seems everyone speaks English these days. I did not even have a chance to try out my high-school German.

What was fun on this trip was of a personal nature. I just finished writing and self-publishing a translation of my grandfather’s memoirs about his experiences as a soldier in World War I. Before he was drafted into the army which then became his life-long occupation he studied agricultural engineering at the Agricultural College in Vienna. Since I was in town and I had some free time, I literally retraced his steps by walking the same halls he must have walked almost a hundred years ago. The pictures on the walls were undoubtedly those of his professors. From the hallway exhibits I saw that the college now emphasizes environmental studies, a field my thirteen-year-old son seems interested in. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I just hope his life doesn’t include being drafted and going through a world war.