Thanks to a last minute thought on Friday as we passed the Moscone Center, I rang my friend Matthew [2], who just happens to be the editor of Australian Macworld, and muttered something about covering the World Wide Developers Conference for him. So, this morning, Doug and I got up at Oh God O’Clock, headed over to The Little Coffee Shop that Could, which thankfully opens at that hour, and then hit the freeway to get to SF by 8.30am. We managed to skleethe our way through accreditation (yes, this is an official term from my teenhood days of watching St Trinians’ movies [1]) and get in to watch the Steve Jobs keynote.
We then sat on the floor of the Moscone Center and I frantically wrote my notes into some semblance of an article while Doug frantically went through his 100+ images to work out which ones were worth sending and then we e-mailed it all to Matthew aiming to meet his 10am Tuesday Australian time deadline.
We then headed off to a silly afternoon talking to some folks about a vacation time share (we said no, but we got the free holiday to Hawaii for two people for two days anyway. Not bad for sitting through 2 hours of pap.). I then rang Matthew to discover half the images and the text had not arrived, so we went careening back to the Moscone Center through peak hour traffic and a stupid accident to get the files sent for real.
Crazy, crazy day, but fun. I felt really chuffed to be actually in the same room as Jobs for a keynote after all these years of watching it on QuickTime streams.
[1] To be honest, the movie I watched religiously (no pun intended) was The Trouble with Angels and the catchphrase there was “I have the most scathingly brilliant idea.” “Sklathe,” now that I really think about it, is from the Eloise books.
[2] Edited from the original because I apparently still have stalkers. I’m amazed that these people have nothing better to do than read my journal, follow links to my friends and harass them anonymously. Thank you for the reminder, though, to keep very quiet about my actual whereabouts so you can’t do anything to my family.