So it's day, I don't know, like thirty of Macworld Expo 2008. Okay, maybe it's only been a few days so far, but really really it feels like I've been here a looong time.
Started off with a really non-exciting Keynote presentation. The highlight of it was Randy Newman saying the word "shit" in the middle of a rambling talk about politics and his music. The low point was Randy Newman's rambling talk about politics and his music. I would honestly, all joking aside, rather watch the teen sitcom with Brittney Spears's over-fertile sister than watch Randy Newman. I've tried both and Newman's harder to take.
The Macbook Air is really a fantastic looking piece of gear. Totally not something I need to get, but it would be really wonderful if I were a regular commuter without high-end photographic needs. It's really amazing that they got it so thin, although I think that the previous small laptop, the 12-inch Powerbook was popular because it was narrow, not because it was thin. But it's neat to be able to stick a laptop in an inner-office envelope.
I started today with a quick bike ride. I'd intended to ride longer, but my Bike Friday was recognized by a guy over at the Ferry Building (where I went for Acme Bread) and chatted with him for about an hour. He was, it turns out a former employee of Apple back in the day (or both ravingly mad and stunningly accurate about products and technology) and now, I think, mostly sits on the benches outside the Ferry Building watching the bay. (I mean that more in a "and drinks gin from a paper cup" sort of way than a "and does so on the good investments of his stock options" sort of way). I only did two miles for the day, but ended up with a fantastic conversation with a very strange but fascinating guy (have you ever met someone with a backpack containing a shirt, toothbrush and eight-page resume of what seems like totally legitimate work experiences?"
Slightly later I walked by perhaps the most interesting woman I've ever seen. About five-feet-zero tall, this asian woman weighed a good two-hundred pounds, was wearing bright pink pants, a bright red cardigan, a yellow shirt and had very poorly applied Kabuki-style makeup on.
I've been doing some great classes at the Photography Experience for Drobo. I'm really really fond of teaching (though giving the same class multiple-days gets to be a bit heavy on the brain). Today we had an interesting experience where the demo Macbook's video cable went missing, and the drive wasn't set up right, so I gave a 40-minute class using only anecdotes and examples, and then pointed people over to the booth for the demo.
In the evening I gave a two-hour class on Aperture at the theater at the Apple store. When I was introduced, the Apple theater manager Travis, who is very nice, said "we've got some great speakers as part of Macworld Expo," which I followed up with "As Travis said, there are some great speakers here, they'll be on later, in the meantime, let me tell you a bit about Aperture." Thank you, I be here all the week. At least forty people were in the audience and unlike last year's presentation all of them knew about Aperture, none of them were there to just take a seat with free WiFi.
Afterwards we had a meetup at the Westin St. Francis hotel (where I once languished from the effects of food poisoning and lay gasping on the bathroom floor instructed Abby to "call a doctor or fucking kill me, whichever is faster") and sat talking Aperture with several of the attendees of the class.
Realizing I hadn't eaten jack shit since lunch with a friend from Apple, we ordered food as the students left, and were joined by my friend from O'Reilly and their Executive Editor. Really nice conversation for a good hour.
Tomorrow I have to wake up at 8:00 to go to a PR meeting with Apple, and then I've got a bit of downtime (read: nap) until my 2pm presentation with Drobo again.
At some point, I'm going to actually try to walk around the show floor. I've only seen a good 40% of the main hall since I got here, and that I experienced with a blazingly bad migraine. You don't know pain until you're walking around a bright, noisy, annoying trade show hall with your eyes watering from pain. This experience was followed up by a wallowing in Starbucks where I tried to caffeinated the headache away. I sat in the back of the coffee shop on their WiFi, having a video chat with Abby over Skype. At one point I was holding my hands to my head to be able to hear her better over my headphones, and leaning forward toward the computer's mic so she could hear me better when I saw a barista trying to talk to me. "We're closing," she said (though it was only neigh 7 pm) and I had the horrible realization that I was suddenly the guy in the back of a Starbucks mumbling at my computer.
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