January 10, 2004: I have just returned from my very first Macworld, which
was held the previous week in San Francisco. I’ve wanted to attend
a Macworld for even longer than I’ve owned a Mac (1995). I started
as an Apple II user and was fortunate enough to attend three AppleFests (1988-1990)
but Steve Jobs was not with Apple during that period so the keynotes were
wholly ordinary. I admit it: my primary driving factor in attending a Macworld
was to experience the full effect of the “reality distortion field,” a.k.a.
a Steve Jobs keynote. While I had already seen Steve speak in person 7 some
years ago (in San Francisco as well, actually…), it was at a Windows
NT conference and Steve was wearing his “CEO of NeXT” hat. While
he was a captivating speaker that day, even when talking about the NeXTStep
programming toolkit for Windows, the audience possessed nothing like the
exuberant tenor of a Mac-centric population. So the desire remained…
A popular advertising campaign of the 1990’s hits the nail on the head:
You only get one chance to make a first impression. The annual Pi bus trip
to the New York Macworld, with a fraction of a day at the expo itself and
realistically none of the conference sessions, did not seem like an appropriate
way to experience Macworld for the first time. Furthermore, in 2003 Apple
started refusing to time their product announcements based on the dates of
Macworld, and more importantly the East Coast iterations of Macworld would
no longer always feature a Steve Jobs keynote. The time had finally come
to face reality: I needed to find a way to get to a San Francisco Macworld
before it was “too late.”
I cashed in frequent flier airline miles, found a hotel roommate, and made
the other firm plans that were part of attending this January’s show.
I also made the major decision to buy a laptop computer, since the Pi reclamation
project has historically chosen to put donated late-20th and -21st century
PowerBooks back in the hands of schools and charities (and not the hands
of the club’s secretary). The cost was approaching $2000.00 for essentially
a personal vacation. Macs are not even the smallest part of my job, so there
was no work tie-in. In fact most of my co-workers just rolled their eyes
at my apparently misdirected/misguided enthusiasm. My wife helped me work
past this by painting the experience as a combination birthday/Christmas
gift from her, and as a pilgrimage (in a quasi-religious kind of way) that
I was entitled to make… once.
The experience was wonderful, and I’m certainly glad I did it. I did
experience some surprises, and there are a few things I would do differently
at the next show & expo I am able to attend. In no particular order,
here are my “8 simple rules” for getting the most out of a Macworld.
1. Attend User Group University (UGU) – At the recommendation of Pi
President Pat Fauquet, I arrived a day early to attend the one-day User Group
University held at what must be the closest hotel to the Moscone Center,
the Argent. You get to meet some pretty interesting people, both the presenters
and your fellow attendees. You get a great lunch, a cocktail hour, and what
I didn’t know going in is that the sponsors give away a lot of very expensive prizes to attendees.
2. Attend a Steve Jobs Keynote, if at all possible - The keynote is
open only to those that have purchased more than just an exhibit
hall pass, and
to members of the media. I was there for the latter reason, and managed
to get a seat in the second row as a result. While I had to stand
in line for
over three hours to secure this position, the rank-and-file attendees
started lining up shortly after midnight on Tuesday (the day of the
keynote). The
energy in that room cannot be described in mere words. It’s not as
much about the “Cult of Steve” as I initially thought, more it’s
the contagious excitement of being completely surrounded by like-minded
individuals (which is a rare feeling in D.C. except at Pi meetings).
3. Plan Ahead (Show Schedule) – There is far more going on at a Macworld
than one person can digest. At least once every day, and often twice, I had
to make a hard choice between session offerings that overlapped each other.
The schedule of conferences and sessions is available online, in the show
program (which is readily available starting the day before the exhibit hall
opens), and as a downloadable Palm OS calendar via several infrared “beaming
stations” in the Moscone Center. I was completely unaware of
the latter option, and therefore left the family Palm Pilot at home
(since
I had the
iBook instead).
Once you have your complete schedule (and any addenda/corrections
to the main program, which has to be bound and printed well before
the
show opens),
determine your plan before each day begins. Sessions featuring industry
celebrities such as David Pogue are almost always full, so by knowing
your agenda, you
avoid arriving too late to attend. The IDG staff were enforcing the
fire code laws and turning people away once a room was S.R.O. (standing
room
only).
4. Plan Ahead (Dining) - Meal options within the Moscone Center were
limited and extremely expensive. Set aside time in your schedule,
if at all possible,
to depart the convention center for a nearby eatery. There
is a very large dining and entertainment facility adjacent to the Moscone
Center
called the
Metreon, which will provide a far better dining experience
than
staying at the show. There must be dozens of other street-side restaurants
within a
5-minute walk as well.
5. Don’t forget the User Group Lounge – Located in one of
the mezzanine rooms this year, the User Group Lounge was literally
an oasis amongst
the chaos. Intended for anyone who is a member of a Macintosh user
group, the lounge featured plenty of uncluttered tables to take a break
from
the show, collect literature from other user groups (the complimentary
copies
of the Pi Journal were one of the more popular items, I must mention),
and (best of all in my opinion) be entertained by some of the very
same Mac-industry
celebrities that pack the rooms at the public Macworld conferences.
Folks like David Pogue, Andy Ihnatko and Shawn King are great supporters
of
the user group concept, and prove it time and again by appearing in
the User
Group Lounge. It was a much more interactive presentation than possible
with the large crowds these luminaries draw most of the time. You
get to see their
more human, personal side, such as David Pogue talking about the
emotion of using iChat AV to reconnect with his family from across the
Atlantic,
and Shawn King interacting with friendly hecklers in the audience
(which included this author).
6. Exhibitors are People Too! - Although this should
have come as no surprise to me (since I have attended trade shows in the
past), the
energy level of
the staff manning the exhibit hall booths steadily decreases between
Tuesday (the first day) and Friday (the last). I made the mistake of
trying to
do almost all my exhibitor visitations on Friday, since that day
had the least
amount of conflicting activities off the show floor. By then, hardly
anyone could be described as ‘extroverted’, having been on their feet
dozens of hours and forced a smile so many times that their face was sore.
They just wanted to go home. My plan was to pass out Pi Journals and use
them as a calling card toward establishing a product-review or meeting-presentation
relationship for the Pi. By Friday, I bet every vendor had already been approached
by hundreds of attendees asking for one thing or another. I was underwhelmed
by the face-to-face response to my solicitations, and as of March 26, 2004
I’ve not heard back from anyone I pitched. I chalk it up to
bad timing on my part.
Even if you’re not coming to them hat-in-hand like I was, keep in mind
that Friday is perhaps best left for re-visiting vendors that most interest
you, and because you’ve been stopping by all week, you have
built something of a relationship with them.
7. Go with a Group – Whether it’s spending time with other members
of Washington Apple Pi, or a group holding a common interest (i.e. subscribing
to a particular newsletter such as TidBits or listening to the Your Mac Life
Internet radio show), plans for after the expo closes each day should include
more than just eating dinner alone and then heading back to your hotel room.
There is a Web site set up every year in honor of the former managing editor
of Macworld, which lists the ‘extracurricular’ activities taking
place. Some are by invitation only, but others simply require advance registration
and a willingness to socialize. This year, I went ice skating (granted, not
the first thing you’d think of doing in San Francisco…) and secured
an invitation to a private party by being in the right place at the right
time. While I was unable to participate, several of the people in my ‘new
circle of friends’ rented a van and drove to Apple’s Cupertino
headquarters (if anything could be considered a “pilgrimage to Macca”,
that would be it), hoping to see more than just the outside of the
buildings on campus.
8. Go as a Journalist! – As evidenced by your reading of this article,
I qualified as a journalist in the eyes of IDG (the company that runs Macworld
Expos) and that meant a few “perks” as compared to the
typical show-goer. The first step toward accreditation is to write
an article
(or three) for the Pi Journal in advance of the show you plan to
attend. The
deadline for the July/August Journal is the end of May, so you still
have time.
I hope everyone reading my words are able to experience a Macworld for themselves,
and enjoy it as much as I did. Feel free to drop me a line at craig.contardi@wap.org
if you have your own “8 simple rules” or have any comments about
my 8.
