I finally have a free moment where I’m not in a conference session, am awake, and have Internet. (More about that in a bit).
The flight down was uneventful. Needless to say, getting to the airport 2 hours ahead of time proved just enough to get me to the gate about 15 minutes before boarding started. Yes, check-in, baggage, customs, security and traversing the terminal ate up and hour and 45 minutes. Such are the joys of air travel in the 21st century…
Announcements noticed upon arriving at San Francisco Airport: “Military Personnel are invited to the Welcome Suite on level…(etc.)” “The current Terror Threat Level is Orange. Please report any Suspicious Looking Behavior to Airport Employees.” Yes, I’m back in the US of A.
As for getting Internet when not at the conference, when I booked the hotel, the description online was Britton Hotel, Internet in all rooms, a decent rate, and 4 blocks from the Moscone Convention Center. It turns out that was only half true. Yes, the rate is OK, and they are roughly 4 blocks (5 if you count the turn from 7th onto Howard Street). However, the Britton Hotel is mostly a pile of rubble, and rising from the ashes (with construction crews starting their work around 8AM each day) is The Good Hotel (yes, that’s the name), and Internet has been nearly non-existent. The pizza parlor that was supposed to be on the ground floor (another amenity I was looking for) is MIA. Fortunately, last night it finally kicked in around 11:00 PM.
That said, its now day 2 of the conference, and I’m trying to take in as much as I can, but it is the proverbial ‘drinking from a fire-hose’ syndrome. Steve Jobs’ Keynote (and announcement of the iPhone 3G and its arrival a month from tomorrow in Canada) was great fun, and today’s early session on developing web pages for Safari on the iPhone had so much information crammed into it that I could barely keep up.
There’s more, but I know after a point, there’s only so much you can take in. However, the wildest thing about this conference is the fact that there appear to be more laptops than humans, and the hardest thing to do is manage battery life. Fortunately, I’m starting to learn where the outlets and power strips are.
More to come.
Just watched the keynote online — awesome! Must have been great seeing it live.
It was fun, although not as much as much fun as some keynotes have been in the past. For Steve Jobs, making a good presentation is easy. Every once in a while, he does an extraordinary keynote, and while this was not one of those, it was definitely worth seeing.
The first day of this conference was clearly different from the rest of the days, which have been an intense compression of tons of highly technical information. The first day was clearly for the outside world. The rest, for the developers of software for the platform(s).
Hello David, we have met briefly before at northern voice conferences. Just want to say I recently added your blog to my rss reader, and have been really enjoying the read. Hope you really enjoyed WWDC.