go to Macworld 2005 in San Francisco

The conference just felt so much more crowded this year than last. They decided to squeeze the exhibit hall into half the space this year, so you were always brushing up against someone as you tried to navigate the booths.

The biggest disappoint was not making it into the Steve Jobs keynote address. Waiting in line for an hour was not enough, it seems.

The conference sessions were a lot of fun. I left thinking that iLife was enough to give me the ability to start a new career as an indie filmaker. A new digital SLR camera and DV camcorder were some of my first purchases after I arrived back home.

I don’t think I’ll go back again next year-I don’t think enough changes year to year to justify it-but I can see myself returning again in a few years.

It was pretty cool. I wished I had gotten more shwag, but I guess I didn’t spend nearly enough time on the show floor.

That’s something to keep in mind for next year.

it happened yesterday, so its to late, I guess I will go next year, I went in 2002 and that was fun, I want to go again.

I just got an email from the Macworld conference. It seems that this year they have decided not to mail badges to attendees before the conference. It’s probably just as well. Last year, I received my badge in the mail after I returned from the conference.

This year I have a proper conference pass (instead of just an exhibit pass), which means that I can get into the keynote addresses. I want to be there for the obligatory Steve Jobs keynote address. Last year I watch bits of it standing behind a crowd of people at the CompUSA a couple blocks away on Market Street.

But you can’t get into the keynote without a badge, and I will be arriving too late Monday night to get one. Fortunately, registration hours have been extended, so I can stand in line for my badge at 6 am on Tuesday morning.

Wake up at 6 in the morning? Do I really want to put myself through that.

With only hours to go before the expiration of the early bird registration, I finally got around to registering for the conference.

From my experiences at the 2004 Macworld, I knew that just getting the basic exhibit hall pass would provide more than enough things to do for several days.

Still, I was feeling pressured by Andrej to do a little more and actually attend some of the sessions. And you can’t attend any of the keynote presentations (including the obligatory Steve Jobs presentation) with just the exhibit pass.

I settled for the users conference package. At 1/8 the price of the top tier package, this is the cheapest way to get a taste of the “real” Macworld experience.

I went to Macworld last year not really expecting anything from it. I didn’t sign up for any of the sessions or presentations. I just had a pass to the exhibit hall. This was the “excuse” to go back to San Francisco, but I really would have been happy even if the exhibition were a complete disaster.

San Francisco is the magical land of Apple. Getting off of the BART at the Powell Street station, I was greeted by subway walls filled with nothing but iPod posters. There was also a giant iPod advertisement high on a building overlooking Union Square.

On my way to the convention center on the first day, I stopped off at the local CompUSA to kill a few minutes before the exhibit hall opened. Half a dozen people were gazing attentively at an iMac screen watching Steve Jobs kick off the event with his keynote address.

There was an excitement in the air that I had never experienced at Microsoft events. The Apple stage had several energetic presentations introducing the new iLife suite and the new iPod Mini. I spent half an hour in the Macromedia section watching a demonstration of Dreamweaver MX and the power of CSS and web standards based site development. A gaming section featured rows of Macs loaded with the latest games for playing.

The next morning I was surprised to find that every street in the downtown area had been transformed overnight by the tooth fairy of advertising. There was at least one poster advertising the iPod Mini on each street, but most had even more.

After poking around with the display model of the SlimP3 Squeezebox, I decided to take the plunge and order a unit for myself. It arrived a week after I returned home and I have been enjoying streaming music ever since.

I also stocked up on several copies of the conference poster. The poster was one of the cleverest designs I have seen. It was based on an update of the classic 1984 Macintosh television commercial, only this runner was equipped with an iPod. You don’t see creativity like that in the boring world of PC computers.

I actually got fairly sick while staying in San Francisco and actually spent most of my vacation time locked up in the hotel with the heater running on high. For a moment I actually thought about skipping the conference and staying curled up in bed. I’m glad I decided to force myself to go, stuffy head, fever, and all. I’m sure I would have gotten even more out of it had I been healthier.

Any affordable good hotels near the convention site?