MacWorld 2007 Day 3, Jan. 11
Neither Lisa or I were feeling fantastic. Especially after walking back to the hotel the night before. I do have to tell a very funny story first about that. I was so tired after the walk that we went downstairs to the bar & grill in the hotel. It was freezing in there so we got our food to take back up to the room where the heat was cranked up. We went to wait at the bar where the bartender looked at me and said, "She can't sit here." while looking at Lisa. OK, so by this point, not feeling well and no makeup, wearing a huge hoodie and a Koala bear nano carrier she just bought, no one would know her true age. But under 21? HAHAHAHA. So, she says "What?" and he says, "Legally she can't sit at the bar." and I almost fall off my bar stool. He thinks I'm her mom. OK, so I am 9 years older than Lisa (as of this Monday) but hey, that's not nice. Still funny though. Back to MacWorld stuff...
Lisa had her voice back a little, but sounded like a cell that keeps dropping parts of the call. You just never know when her voice is going to cut out. So, we slept in a bit before meeting with Sean Corfield for lunch. I had the biggest Calzone you ever saw. All of the other people eating started commenting on it. The waiter just said, stick your fork in it and see. So, I did and it deflated to a flat-ish pastry with some bits inside. Funny though.
Onward to the conference. Thursday seemed like the day where there were the most things happening. At least before Lisa bought the DVD of all the presentations it seemed the day to see the most. Once she bought the MacWorld DVD, nothing seemed that pressing. So, it was a good time to get to the booths we wanted to get back to, and the Booth presentations I hadn't seen yet.
Adobe's booth had The Russell Brown Show. Filled to the brim with people, and can you blame them? It's Russell Brown for gosh sake. For those who haven't been a Photoshop nerd for the last 17 years, (and not the British politician)he has been apart of the Adobe Dream team and has written many books. Russell is a nut. A brilliant nut, but that's what makes him such a draw at Adobe's booth. He's fun to watch.
I wanted to make sure and see the Lynda.com booth for the Ruby on Rails instructor. The problem is they only have anywhere from a half an hour to forty-five minutes to present, not a long time to go in-depth on a subject like this. Did I learn anything? Nope. I did feel a little sorry for him and all the web presenters. They hardly had anyone at their sessions. I forgot how the general Apple public is, and am use to the web geeks at this point. I feel more at home talking about the latest CSS standards and how they work with IE7 and Firefox, then how to work in iTunes these days.
I tried one last time to see a session in the User group lounge, but it wasn't what I expected it to be. I thought they were going to be talking about how to revitalize your UG Board. Thinking it would be about how to re-energize the Board, but in reality it was how to get new board members. Boring! Sorry, but for our group, we have elections every year, no need to find a new Board member. The woman talking said their President stayed president for over 11 years. Egad. Why would anyone want that for that long. Power hungry? Who knows. Anyway, we have a hard time keeping ours for over 3 years. They get burned out from trying to get volunteers etc.
Luckily, I don't have too much of that problem with the Adobe group. I just ask nicely to the people that have the most to share. Lord knows if I waited for them to actually volunteer we'd have fewer meetings. Truth is, there are always members who have more to share than they think they do, and seem happy to share once you make sure they know just how much other members would get out of their presenting. Speaking in front of others scares some, but we are a small friendly group and hopefully no one judges a small case of the nerves.
Anyway, after that, there didn't seem to be much else on the schedule and Lisa wanted to take some pictures before it got dark. The wind had really picked up as the temperature went down. We stopped at the Metron to see what stores they had. There was a cool store in there last time with some bags I liked. Not there now, so we went all the way up to where there was an exhibit artifacts from the Titanic.
We took a couple of pics from the roof and then headed down in the elevator. Several people joined us on the next floor down, including a man about 7'2" in a huge blue fur coat. A kid in the back said, "Do you play basketball?". This is only funny because it was Shaq. I was trying not to stare as I was right next to him. I didn't even get a picture of him. Lisa was amazed because I still had the camera in my hand.
We took the trolley car down to the Wharf. It was getting kind of late by then. We looked at a few shops and then decided to eat at Scoma's, as someone had recommended the night before. I hadn't had fresh, caught that day, fish in a while. The crab legs were amazing.
See all pics on Flickr.
So, to wrap things up... MacWorld was somewhat fun. I was heavily disappointed in the keynote. Since they overbooked all the sessions I wanted to go to, like Aral's sessions, and none of the press got into anything without paying for them, I didn't get to see anything I went to MacWorld to see besides the keynote. FlashForward was the only reason I went and didn't find out till last minute I wasn't going to be allowed into anything. If I had known, I would have bought tickets before the early bird registration was over. I had no intention of paying as much as they wanted without a discount. MacWorld is a very expensive conference.
I don't plan on ever attending a MacWorld again. I will focus my time on conferences that will benefit me and potentially enhance my career. I'll be at MAX this year, and maybe go to the Flex conference beside Frameworks. I'd like to get my Flex certification and take some classes to embrace AS 3.0. For those of you who know I am a designer, yes I know I should give up on OOP, or so you all keep telling me. For those of you who actually know me, you know I can't. It's my sole purpose to learn something new all the time and stretch my comfort limits in that process. Being uncomfortable learning something makes me want it that much more.
Next time I blog, I will be preparing for Frameworks by a series of Design for Developers tips and tricks of Photoshop, Fireworks and CSS.
Till next time,
Dee
