Friday I came home from work and my wife said, "You got something in the mail from Portugal!?" I had been watching the EMC newsletter and the EMC facebook page and I knew the long awaited DVDs were coming soon. I was very excited to finally get my DVDs!

The 2010 Essential Magic Conference was awesome and well worth the money without watching all the sessions. The funny thing is through video streaming and now the DVDs I can watch all the sessions over and over again. I think you can still register and get the streaming videos ( and possibly the DVDs ), however you will definitely want to sign up for the 2011 conference as soon as they announce it. From the end of the following video it sounds like they are going to have one for sure.

I know my JAMM posts usually showcase a magician performing magic in some way and this post is targeted toward magicians. So if you are a magician I hope you check this out. If the JAMM posts have inspired you to look into performing magic this is great for you as well. I only consider myself a beginner/novice magician and I got a lot out of these sessions.

Did you already know about the Essential Magic Conference? Did you watch it? If you did what did you think of it? If not, why not!? I'd love to hear your opinions.

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The 15th through the 17th of July held a very special magical event. This event was the Essential Magic Conference. The first ever international online magic conference ( at least that's what I got from the marketing ). At a price of just 55 euros, it was worth every penny before the end of the first day. One participant even mentioned in chat that it was worth the price after the first session. Speaking of the first day, so far that's all I have gotten through. Sure, I listened and watch parts of the sessions from days 2 and 3 as they were happening live but its taken until now for me to have the time to actually study the first 3 sessions from day 1. As of last Friday, all 9 sessions are available online as video on demand for people who signed up for the conference. So, if you missed this conference in real time you can still get more than your registration fee out of these videos.

As someone who still considers himself a novice magician, I gained loads from the first day( and even the first session) with speeches, performances and presentations form the likes of Lennart Greene, Barry & Stuart, Ponta the smith, Apollo Robbins, Gaetan Bloom, Max Maven and many more.

While I gained a lot from everybody, I gained the most from a magical duo I hadn't heard of before - Barry & Stuart. They had a first day speech entitled, "Everything We've Learned So Far" [Registration Required]. What drew me in the most was an idea that their presentation kept dancing around and they summed up in one of their final bullet points as:

If you want to subvert your art, you need to first learn your craft.

While I have never come across as much of a rebel who would want to subvert much of anything, I do have this constant need to make things my own and I latched on to many of their ideas. Barry and Stuart are 2 young guys who have worked hard and created a niche and name for themselves in magic. And while there are many performances from day 1 I'd like to show my readership ( Ponta the smith's performance in session 1 comes to mind ) - I don't have access and permission to do that. So, I've looked up an entertaining video of Barry and Stuart for my magical and muggle readership alike. Enjoy. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFSkpwLEi-A&w=500&h=405]

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Essential Magic Conference 2010 and 2011?

EMC 2010 Report - Just Another Magic Monday (Day 1)