I arrived at McCormick Place at 6:45 this morning, to find registration infull swing and about 100 people already in line for Steve Jobs’s 8:30keynote address. I noticed almost immediately when entering the facilitythat Apple had the predominant corporate presence, with an impressive boothjust inside the door of the show floor, Apple-logo goodie bags, and lots ofpeople wandering around with Apple Distinguished Educator polo shirts.
I arrived at McCormick Place at 6:45 this morning, to find registration infull swing and about 100 people already in line for Steve Jobs’s 8:30keynote address. I noticed almost immediately when entering the facilitythat Apple had the predominant corporate presence, with an impressive boothjust inside the door of the show floor, Apple-logo goodie bags, and lots ofpeople wandering around with Apple Distinguished Educator polo shirts.
Many people in line were carrying iBooks, and I soon learned that Apple wasalso running a check-out program where conference attendees could borrow aniBook for the day, carry it around the conference, surf on the wirelessnetwork, etc. Very cool idea! But they must have been using access controlon the Airport network, because I couldn’t connect to it from my Pismo.
While chatting in line I also learned that the conference consisted mainlyof people who buy and manage technology for K-12 school districts. (I’m justa local web developer who took the opportunity to see Steve here in themidwest.) Their typical job function is upgrading the software on 100 iMacsusing Network Assistant. The folks I talked to were surprisingly pro-Mac andsurprisingly well-equipped … although of course the well-equippeddistricts are the most likely to send people to the conference.
The doors opened in good time and I took a seat in the third row of thepublic section (behind a 30-row VIP section). This was my first time seeingSteve talk, but the whole scene was very familiar from the photos andwebcasts — dark purple drapes with two glowing Apple logos, an enormousprojection screen, and a G4 at a little black table to the side. And whenSteve walked out with blue jeans, black turtleneck, and a bottle of mineralwater, everything was familiar indeed.
The talk was organized around the three groups of educators that Apple isaddressing: Students, Teachers, and Administrators. Steve pushed iBook forstudents, iMovie and iDVD for teachers, and PowerSchool for administrators.He took some direct shots at Dell and Compaq when describing the iBook, andhis comments seemed to hit their targets among the audience. There were goodvibes all around about the iBook.
Personally, I was impressed by PowerSchool, which obviously isn’t PowerBookrelated, but a cool product nevertheless. It’s an entirely web based schooladministration system, which lets teachers, staff, and parents shareinformation instantaneously. That’s right, a parent can log into PowerSchoolfrom work and make sure his or her kids were on time for math class! Theycan also see a running total of the student’s grade in real time, ratherthan waiting until the end of the term, when it’s too late to do anythingabout it. As PowerSchool’s president said, “I’m kind of glad they didn’thave this when I was a kid.”
There were also some iDVD and iTools demos, and Steve left after about 50minutes. No new product intros, no new iMac … but a good crowd and a niceopportunity to see the industry from a different perspective. Definitely anice way for a Mac junkie to start the week, and I was even back in theoffice by 10:30!