Mentions of the Vanishing Point Game were given in the Keynote tonight as Mauricio Freitas and I clicked away at the large screens, it seems like we among a rare few there that knew what it meant. My pictures didn’t come out too well because I didn’t bring my big lens and I figured if I really needed to read the information I could refer to Mauricio’s pictures or screen cap from the video playback if this was in the video playback The presentation was done by Justin Hutchinson, a Group Product Manager for Windows Vista covering a feature many in corporate environments with servers have experienced for years called Windows Vista ShadowCopy.
The keynote was packed, just getting into it was an ordeal, running through the lobby, Casino, and conference center was no fun.If you have never been to Vegas these Hotels are huge-running it took us 20 minutes to get from the front of the Venetian to the line for the keynote and even more to get to the hall. All this effort seemed almost wasted to find our VIP seats were taken due to logistics from leaving from the Vista Lab put on by Microsoft. Some people were pretty miffed, but C’est la vie.We still found seats in the front/middle of the venue(second section), which still seemed pretty far away, but was better than most.
We got to enjoy a ton of Powerpoint slides, videos, and people walking up and down the aisles on stilts and other Mardi Gras gear. I don’t know why, but hey this is Vegas…
Jason Dunn and I even had more Casino fun walking to the Pepcom Digital Experience Event, by taking a “shortcut” through the Casino and Mall instead of walking another ¼ of a mile up the strip to the main entrance after ducking out of the keynote 15 minutes early to avoid the crowds. (We were able to finally coordinate meeting-up after several combination, phone, email, and text messages- isn’t mobile technology great!) Finding the way in or should I say way back outside on the other side of the Casino to the event would have been easier if there was proper signage, but I am sure it was the Casino’s doing not to deter their clients from gambling and attracting uninvited guests to the Pepcom event.
Well, we made it and had a pretty good time meeting up and catching up with some old friends. This year’s event was almost double the size of last year’s event and I quickly moved through the booths hitting those I really wanted to talk to and see. I then looped back and slowly meandered through the rest of the booths to try and take in as much new technology as possible while snapping pictures and video. I will cover more of what I saw from Pepcom’s Digital Experience in another post. I am tired, after the Pepcom event we went to an HP Party at the Pure, then Chris Leckness, Jack Cook, Jason Dunn, Tyler Welch, Matt Miller, and myself wanted a salty snack and got some fries at McDonalds, not that the Gourmet food at the functions were OK, but we needed something to fill our bellies as well as find a quiet place to talk and catch up on things-Vegas free. I didn’t get back to my room until 3AM. Busy day tomorrow filled with impromptu meetings, IDC session on Mobility, running the Windows Mobile booth for an hour, and then maybe seeing the Vanishing Point event at the Bellagio, Heading to Showstoppers, watch the TigerDirect PC building contest and root on a few friends, then catch a late flight to Redmond, stay a day, an return to Vegas the next morning. Yes, I don’t have a sauce to stir, but I hear helicopters…
Written by Steven Hughes - Visit Website
