DrunkenBlog

Scoping out the event site

Sunday, as a whole, was a bit of a trip. I got to stop and spend three-ish hours at the Adler Planetarium for a tour (and a show) where it looks like the event is going to go down. No sleep the night before so I could clear off the day, along with 2.5 hours on the train and several beers at lunch before we showed up, but no one seemed to pay any mind, or at least was polite when I was having to backtrack at points in the conversation to follow along...

Probably the most amusing aspect was when I was being introduced to people, as people feel very silly explaining why a guy named "drunkenbatman" is poking around under the stairs at a rack of Apple cubes and routers...

Thom Brooks was our guide (The freakishly tall guy on the left outside the media room -- I'm over 6' and not used to looking up at someone), and the guy who is really doing so much of the work of making all this happen there, and it was so incredibly cool to see all the behinds-the-scenes stuff. I.E., where and how they put their displays together, the secure areas where they have stuff that's too valuable to display, all the tech that makes their stuff happen... and on and on.

Let me just say that I've been to the planetarium before, and if more people were aware of just how they're hacking some of this stuff together, they'd have geeks lining up to volunteer their time for it. I was laughing really hard when I saw the 50 Apple cubes and several Xserves crammed under the stairway behind the new media lab their working on, and kept completely forgetting being tired due to the geeking out. I saw enough cool stuff that I'd be here all day noting it down, but let's just say they're taking what they're given and working hard to get the most out of it.

I also got to check out the theater where the talk will hopefully go down (more soon), and it's about as perfect as perfect can be for having a bunch of big brains in a semicircle talking over the issues of today and tomorrow. It's huge, and yes, it has fiber optics in the ceiling which can display constellations. There's this lovely low-key retro-theater vibe I have always dug. It's perfect.

I was mentioning to them that one of the biggest things I was having to look into the for talk was the A/V component, so that people that just can't make it -- often due to oceans being in the way -- will be able to see it later in some form via download... "Yeah, don't worry about that stuff. We have microphones, and multiple three-CCD cameras, that shouldn't be any problem.."

More to come with a hopefully final date soon, but we're getting closer to locking it all in. These guys are being amazing about this and going above and beyond to make it happen. The whole thing is taking on a really good vibe (I'm probably jinxing it now), and I'm starting to get really, really excited.

 Posted by drunkenbatman
    September 12, 2005, at 03:31 PM