Macworld SF 2005: The saga begins...
So here we are, FINALLY! Jaron and I arrived early this morning at the Moscone Center to pick up our credentials. All was looking GOOD and life couldn't be better except for a few glitches. Having media access definitely has it's perks. However, it also has it's downside. As media, we get full access to pretty much everything at the conference (except Hands-On sessions). The catch is that if a conference or session is sold out, we can't get into that either. So being the super-nerd techie Systems Engineer that I am, I wanted to attend todays Power Tools Session on Mac OS X Server Advanced Administration. Guess, what? SOLD OUT. Hence, I am hosed. There were other sessions that were sold out as well. Only a few of the creative sessions are still open. I went to the Dreamweaver session and almost fell asleep. I can't handle that all day.
Other travesties include not being able to get the spiffy nice canvas bag that all paid attendees will get. Man, what a nice book bag, sux to be me on that one (there is still plenty of time to try and score one of those bad boys). BUT, there is a silver lining in every cloud.
The good news is that this conference is friggin PACKED! Today is the slow day and it is humming with activity. Unofficially IDG is expecting over 33,000 users to attend this conference. By the looks of things here on opening day, they will hit that number with no problem. Previous conferences had numbers reported as high as 90,000+ people attending. Those numbers were a little bogus. They were based on turn-style counts and pre-registered attendees (regardless of whether they actually attended or not). So if a person came on day one, then again on day 2, they were counted twice. This year, IDG has promised to use a more accurate tracking system and will provide an audited and verified attendance count at the end of the event. All-in-all, 33,000 people will be nothing to sneeze at. It is good to see the Mac making such a huge comeback, and the public fully embracing the platform.
Stay tuned for more reports throughout the week...
