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Wednesday, July 27, 2005

SIGGRAPH Next Week!

SIGGRAPH stands for "Special Interest Group for Gigantic Rooms of Advertisers Pitilessly Harrassing", if I'm not mistaken.

SIGGRAPH is the best and largest digital technology trade show - particularly with regard to the creative fields and, you know, graphics and stuff - on the entire planet Earth. Perhaps the best and largest in the whole Solar System. There's no way of knowing for sure yet. But I believe that in our lifetime, some young genius at SIGGRAPH will present an elegant device which will actually allow us to determine if SIGGRAPH is the best and largest digital technology trade show in the Solar System and will do so in a really engaging, user-friendly and cross-platform compatible format that you can use at home (four D type batteries not included).

If you have never attended SIGGRAPH, you cannot imagine the overwhelming bounty of software, hardware and otherware on display. At past SIGGRAPH shows I have seen thrilling presentations of Internet, filmmaking, and computer gaming innovations, which have yet to appear out here in the real world. Maybe they have them in Japan (I have this unshakeable fantasy that in Japan they are all flying around with jet packs summoning their personal Giant Robots on their two-way wrist radios, while we here in America are not yet over the excitement of color television).

So I intend to be at SIGGRAPH next week.

Then again, I intended to give my screenplay to my manager today and that didn't quite work out. After a long discussion about some story points, I'm going to do a little more work, then send him the finished piece on Friday. So who knows if I'll be at SIGGRAPH on Sunday and Monday.

Or I could telling just one more terrible, terrible lie.

But if I am, you will read about it here.

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addendum:

SIGGRAPH POST:

SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater


posted at 10:39 PM - permalink

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2 Comments:

Hey Neal,
I'm going to disagree here and say that SIGGRAPH is not, in fact, "the best and largest digital technology trade show." SIGGRAPH is all about computer graphics. From input through output anything and everything to do with computer graphics is what you'll encounter at SIGGRAPH.

CES and NAB would qualify as "digital technology trade shows" and perhaps much more full service "digital technology trade shows" than SIGGRAPH could be. It's not just about technology. It has a lot to do with art and theory.

Also, I think you'll find that it's not primarily a trade show. It bills itself as conference and exhibition, which is more accurate. SIGGRAPH is not so much about selling and buying as it is about showing, seeing and learning. Indeed, it is a big even that happens in big convention halls much like a trade show, but if you've spent any time at SIGGRAPH you'll find that it's much more.

It's the one show that really has a distinct personality and it's a pretty nice one. Whereas E3 is the loud obnoxious guy that you can tolerate once a year, SIGGRAPH is the cool cousin, who's yearly visit you look forward to with anticipation.

If it sounds like I have some sort of queer obsession with SIGGRAPH, well maybe I do. It just seems to short sell the event to call it a digital technology trade show.

See you at the Convention Center.

- By Blogger Rob, at Sat Jul 30, 08:00:00 PM GMT+1  

Yes. Very good illuminating points there.

And to call something a "digital technology trade show" is, these days, meaningless. Any trade show at all, if it features any technology, is going to feature DIGITAL technology.

- By Blogger Neal Romanek, at Sat Jul 30, 09:37:00 PM GMT+1  

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