non-Apple related trip info may be found in my YES

Some linked pics / stuff may open in a new browser window for convenience

9 September 2002 - It was raining as the Air France shuttle bus from Charles de Gaulle airport arrived right at the Palais des Congrès where the keynote would be held the next day.

rainy view of main entrance, Palais des Congrès -- my unattended baggage on right

I went inside -- lots of shops, but apparently it was sort of early and the place was deserted except for some guards at an info desk. I showed them my press pass for the keynote and Expo, one of them phoned someone and he wrote level 2, room 242 on the back of the envelope -- elevators were seemingly not working, and I dreaded having to climb all those stairs loaded down with my carry-on, duffle bag and attache case -- which were becomming heavier as I walked! I saw a guy walk onto the stopped escalator and it started automatically! DUH! So I did the same thing and got to the next level and had yet another to go.

Now to find room 242 -- there was no 242! But in a far passage I noted a wooden crate marked with an Apple logo in the hall outside, so I went into a smallish room with some dudes setting up for some kind of an Apple-related event. -- I asked them if this was where the keynote would be held and they said yes, which was a surprise due to the smallness of the room. I parked all my baggage near a seat in the back row to be out of their way and asked if there was a men's room nearby -- they did not have a clue, so I went out, dragging all my stuff with me again. I am sweating and half alive at this point, but really had to use the bathroom.

It was sort of amazing how well they have this congress building set up -- a lot of the directional signs have velcro backings and may be placed wherever needed for a particular event, and they appear as if they were always there as permanent fixtures. None of the bathroom signs had their arrows attached which, I assume, meant that they were all locked/unavailable and would finally be velcro-placed when an event was ready to begin. There are large TV screens all over the place indicating events and on which level they will be held.

So I walked the length of that enormous level and found no bathroom -- saw a cleaning lady and she pointed across the hall -- inside was a black worker (remember that the French had many colonies in Africa, and the immigrant population is quite large) washing a shirt. I got in a stall, and just about had enough energy left to lower myself onto the seat!

OK, what to do next? I returned to the Apple room I was in before and just plopped my stuff against a chair, propped my feet upon another chair and closed my eyes. I figured that when the guys went to leave, they would wake me up and I would then go outside and find a place to stay. I did not really sleep, but it was now about 15h and I sort of heard what I though was a camera shutter clicking twice. I opened my eyes but there was noone there that I could see.

Some minutes later I did hear voices and there was a male and a female dressed leisurely, asking what I was doing there. I began my usual slow pronunciation in English, thinking they were French and hoping that they would understand me -- I did ask if they spoke English and they said they were from the Apple security team from Cupertino! WOWSERS, so I went through much of the background of why and how I got there -- they seemed sort of distantly interested, but had other more important things to do, so the bottom line was that they were closing that room and I would have to leave -- not a surprise -- matter fo fact I mentioned to them that although I did not plan on spending overnight propped on some chairs, I was simply resting after a really sleepless couple days and figured that someone would show up to chase me out and perhaps suggest a cheapy place that I could stay -- and I told them I had envisioned two potential scenarios -- someone sort of like them would appear and would ask why I was there, OR some dudes in black would appear, with helicopters overhead and a SWAT team that would drag me out in chains! They laughed and said they have power, but not that much power!

OK, back on the road with all my junk. Down the 2 levels and out the front door. I would do what I usually did in a new place, sort of fan out looking for a place to stay. For the non-Apple related action-packed saga, go to Paris.

10 September 2002 - I arrived at the Palais des Congrés at about 08:30h. Now all the TVs and signs/banners outside and inside showed the new iMac and the Expo Logo. I only had my attache case with the laptop and my camera with me this time. Easily found the PRESS sign, and went to sign-in. My name was natutrally on the list and they gave me my badge in a nice plactic clip-on thingy, but the badge was put in it backwards, and the clip was quite difficult to open. I had to pass security and all -- the usual thing. Loads of young gals in uniform all over the place to facilitate getting to where one has to go. There were some tables inside the room with coffee and pastry, and that is where I was headed.

At this point some American-looking gal checked out my press pass and summoned a French security guard over saying that I could not be seated in the press section -- no reason given. He took the pass. I was at a loss for words, but did ask how I was going to get into the keynote without the pass and how would I take pics and all -- and afterward, more importantly, how would I get into the press room at the Expo site on the other side of town to get the news on my web site. She said I would have no problem -- I asked her to swear that it would not be a problem because that is the only reason I came all the way to Paris in the first place. She assured me that all was OK, and the nice security dude accompanied me to level 2 where the public entrance to the keynote was. There were other security checks along the way, and although he did not really understand my particular circumstances (neither did I at this point!), he did a quicky explanation and I got through to the entrance door where a long line had already formed. It was now about 09:20, and the doors would not open until 10h. Incidently, this was the normal visitor entrance area -- they could not bring in cameras or puters or anything else, for that matter. I was the only one with an attache case and camera hanging around my neck!

I asked the two girls at the door how I would get to take pics and where the press was usually seated. Apparently the first 15-20 rows are reserved for VIPs and PRESS. I asked if I could get a chair to sit on until the doors opened, but the only thing they came up with was the edge of a table next to the doors, on which the headphone gear for English/French translations were stashed -- not a problem, at least I would be sitting -- my other option would be to sit on the floor as a few others had done, but it would take me forever to get back up again. So there I was, perched on the table edge, and as I look at the pic, somehow I seem sort of unlike the rest of the crowd!

There were at least 6-8 entrance doors, and the lines quickly filled up at each -- a lot of 30-40-ish folk -- many young dudes also, not a lot of gals, and few if any blacks -- some orientals.

The doors finally opened and I was one of the first inside from my line looking for a seat on the end of a row on the left center section. At the start of the VIP/Press section I did not even try to get closer and parked in the first row of the general audience, which is where I was told that I could get better pics anyway. The seats quickly filled up and the stage was set up with the usual Apple logos, a large screen in the center, and a small table with puters set up on the left, and another longer one having several computers on the right -- sort of like the New York Expo. (at this point in the writing I am in my hotel room and just opened a bottle of the Brugs beer using the nail clipper I managed not to forget when packing! Not the easiest thing to do, but I did forget to bring my mini-bottle opener!)

An announcement was made that the keynote would begin in five minutes -- everything was quite -- the lights dimmed and on the main screen they showed the new switcher ads in English, followed by that gal from the last batch that everybody says seems crocked or something! A technician from French TV was 2 rows in front of me on the left, with his monster camera. The applause after each ad was wild, as might be expected -- a lot of chuckles when that gal appeared! Naturally I joined in the clapping and laughing, as this was a dream come true for me -- I did not get to see Steve at the NY expo, and here I was, an ocean away, doing what I only hallucinated about before!

Then Steve walked out and the audience went wild. Unfortunately my pics are quite dark, so try your best to see whatever you can in them. [gawd, this beer is good!]

Steve went through basically the same stuff he did at the NY keynote, but making reference to Parisian connections at every turn. He did the cell phone thing, and they exchanged the where to go afterward and all, and mentioned that the map section of the instant messaging/Sherlock app was still being worked on for France, as were other data particulars. He did bring up the French bourse stock quotes. What did appear as automatic info links, did largely appear in French -- his presentation was in English.

He went through the digital hub concept, adding that iCal was available starting today as a free download. He did more or less the same iCal demo as he did in NY, but with updated calenders which included the Paris Expo. When he went through his usual list of pals, I found that Jonathan Ives was glaringly absent for some reason, and he was not among those attending. hmmmmmmmm

An announcement that Phillips was joining the Apple digital hub strategy, via a video in which the CEO of Phillips said they were developing things which would appear in 2003. Very interesting! Phillips does make some large flat panel digital TVs, among other devices, which could bring a lot of exciting potential to the hub concept. I first saw these TVs in Copenhagen/Denmark some years ago, and they are really kewl. They have much larger, better definition screens now, and I have yet to see one in any of the usual electronic discount stores back in NJ. Who wants a massive projection TV if one can get a thin unit which can even be mounted on a wall and has much better definition, color and all?

He said that there were 6 parts to the digital hub -- iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iCal, Sherlock and iSync -- the last of which I do not recall from the NY Expo -- it seemed to connect everything else on the hub. Parts of Sherlock were still being developed/fine tuned for France, and I assume, the rest of Europe.

He went through details about the new towers, the new iMac and the eMac -- including the prices in Euros, mentioning, somewhat cynically, that taxes are extra! No mention that I can recall about the iBook or powerbooks. hmmmmmmmm -- I wonder why? Brief mention of BlueTooth was made during the cell phone part of his exposition, as it was at the NY Expo.

In about 75 minutes it was all over -- the expected standing ovations and all. There were no new hardware announcements or computer updates mentioned, which was a minor surprise.

I waited until most of the seats cleared out then asked the uniformed gal if I could get up closer to take some pics -- she said OK. Let me add at this point that my Nikon had been flashing constantly on the AF green light, and I had no clue what that meant, other than I could not take any pics! OMG, now that I was able to get 3 rows from where my hero was talking with people near the stage, the freekin camera gets weird on me!

OK, so I was that close to Steve -- he did not appear as sort of overweight as I seemed to note in the streaming video from the NY Expo. And he was a tad shorter than I had imagined. Smiling, and seemingly friendly, very interactive with those surrounding him.

I had gotten a white Halo Beanie bear decorated for me with an Apple on its chest from a lady on eBay last year -- she did it especially for me because of my interest in Apple computers. It occurred to me to bring it along to give to Steve because he would be the most appropriate person in the entire Universe to have the critter. It has gold wings, and some reddish lace in back and several bracelets and all, all with an apple motif -- totally feminine touches, but very cute nonetheless, and very artistically done. Unfortunately I never got around to taking a pic of the baby, so I cannot even present it to my readers.

So there was this lady in a red dress standing next to Steve, and I motioned that I had this bear in a clear plastic baggie to give to Steve and suggested tossing it his/her way. She did not quite know what to say, so I just gently threw it to her. She looked at it, and tossed it to somebody on her right, saying something or other to them, and they in turn tossed it to somebody else. I do not think that Steve even got a glimpse of the poor thing! I was still trying to get that freekin green light to stop blinking on my camera, and by time it occurred to me to take the batteries out and put them back in -- which, incidently, reset whatever was malfunctioning -- Steve had already jumped back onto the stage for pics, back down again, and was now on his way out with his entourage! DAMN!

OK, I was naturally thrilled and at the same time frustrated as hell -- I left and went to see if they had shuttle busses to the Expo site at the Porte de Versailles Expo center, at the south-west end of Paris. Yes, but they only go there, none come back - not a problem, I would take the Metro for the first time. Two of the uniformed Expo gals posed for that pic. There were some 4-5 busses -- some had left before mine, and there were only about 8 other press people in the one I was in.

One of them was sitting across from me and we talked along the way and gave me his card, Nelson Gregory of Webedisoft in Paris. He told me where the potential site of the new Apple Store in Paris might be located, and I hope to check it out before I leave -- it is not too far from where I am staying. He also expected some new hardware mention at Steve's keynote, and was happy, as was I, to see that Phillips was joining the hub strategy -- although it suggests to me that anything made by Phillips might appear in Europe long before it/they ever reach the US markets. Curiously he had never heard of HyperTransport when I mentioned it (although he was familiar with BlueTooth) -- HT was one of the things I had wanted to ask Steve about if his pitbulls would have allowed me to.

For some reason he thought that the TiBooks would be discontinued, and the product lines changed/consolidated somehow in a more meaningful way, somewhat along the lines of the various PC product lines and how they do things -- which, I assume, is different from Apple's. I have seen some PC laptops in several shops, quite small (quite frankly, absolutely nothing even remotely comparable to a TiBook!), and some of them even included BlueTooth technology -- not an Apple/Mac in any of the electronic stores I popped into.

I guess it took us at least 15 minutes to reach our destination, and we immediately went to the Press reception area at the far left. They checked my name on their printout and issued me a press pass, placing it in the neato plastic thing, but, once again it was in backwards and the clasp was extremely difficult to open. So now I had my coveted press pass once again! I still do not understand the glitches or whatever about my pass from the keynote location -- it seemed sort of strange for some reason. I can only assume that in some round-about indirect way, notice/mention was made about some semi-scruffy character (mua!) was trying to snooze in that room where they were setting up what turned out to be an Apple/European rep conference, and somebody from Cupertino got all hyperventilated or whatever.

The press room was filled with racks of goodies from various software and hardware companies -- I stocked up on a bunch -- plus the press folder and the Expo catalogue -- what a herd of goodies and nothing to put them in. No coffee or snacks, so the nice ziplock baggies I brought along to stash munchables in served no immediate purpose!

On either side of the room were tables with new iMacs set up, but most peeps used their laptops (some of which were PCs) to do whatever they were doing. All the spaces were filled, so I went out to the expo floor to see what there was to see. Hundreds of exhibitors, some large and well known, others I had never heard of -- Iomega, MacWorld, Adobe, LINUX, Newsweek, Canon, Corel, Nikon, Symantec were among the ones I recognized, and Apple had several areas specializing in different activities/seminars/demos. The place was jammed, and all of the demos were well-attended - most in French.

Many retailers were well stocked both in software and hardware -- I saw many buyers lugging new iMacs and other Apple computers away with them, and of course, many copies of Jaguar and software / peripherals from other vendors. I noticed that many were carrying plastic totes from La Tribune (Le Quotidien Économique et Financier) so I found their stand and got 2 totes to stash my stuff in -- what a relief!

Iomega - Iomega vous invite à découvérir en avant-première mondiale le lecteur Zip® 750 Mo FireWire® -- this was at 15:30.

MacWarehouse has a large presence, and they are connected with the entity of the same name from which I get frequent mailorder catalogs in NJ. They had a VIP lounge with full bar and munchables, so needless to say, that was one of my stops! Their French organization seems to be directed more towards the corporate level -- no iPods or other purely non-pro consumer items in the catalogue they gave me. And it is presented quite interestingly -- the following is the setup of the first few pages -- on the left a full page about one puter/with price, and on the opposite page a comparison of a similar Apple line/with price... a kewl way to do comparison shopping -- notice the usually lower price for the Apple products ....

PC Product	Apple Product
HP / Compaq Evo D310 -- 830 Euro	iMac G3 -- 819 Euro
eMac G4 -- 1169 Euro	iMac -- 1359 Euro
HP / Compaq EVO -- 1609 Euro	Power Mac G4 - 1799 Euro
HP Omnibook 510 -- 2350 Euro	iBook -- 1329 Euro
Sony VAIO - 2840 Euro	Powerbook G4 -- 2839 Euro
Proliant DL380 G2 -- 3590 Euro	Xserve -- 3299 Euro

At about 15h I my legs were giving out from walking around so much, chatting here and there with vendors/reps, so I returned to the press room to try my luck at connecting with what little web site news material I had at the time, just to get a feel for it. All the stations were busy -- all of the stations were loaded with Jaguar, and most with their own laptops were also using that OS. One dude had his photographer friend download zillions of pics as thumbnails, and was picking out the ones he wanted to use and started processing them via PhotoShop. Others had the stories they were writing on one open page, while comparing notes with something on another open page. I only had a couple pics and really felt sort of out of the mainstream somehow.

One British guy left and said I could move in to his spot, which I did -- he was sitting there for hours. Needless to say I was clueless, so I asked the dude on my left how to connect, speaking in French -- surprisingly he was from Madrid, and we were able to converse a lot easier in Español! He was also working on a TiBook, so he checked my control panels and tried several configurations to get me connected -- some apparently did not work, but the AirPort connection connected to two different AirPort links on the Expo floor, but they were seemingly busy/distant, and the connectivity varied greatly, from connection lost to only a moderate connection. The Expo connection did not seem to work (he connected the ethernet cable from the Expo puter), and I later learned that it was down -- so much for advance planning on the part of the organizers! I mean this was not exactly a refrigerator show!

We did manage to connect momentarily to the internet, but it fizzled out before I could use ftp to put what little I had on my two sites. I sat there processing some pics and trying the connection every now and then -- same story, the connectivity was not enough to keep things rolling -- the dog on Fetch ftp just kept running without actually loading my files, so I gave up on that.

In the meantime the spot on my right was free and immediately was taken by another dude with a TiBook, also from Madrid! Damn, I was feeling more and more at home! He also tried to get me connected, with intermittant success -- at times using the expo ethernet cable -- but only the AirPort connection, which was not optimal to say the least, seemed to function. I assume that all the reporters had their own European IP setup and if they actually got online, they did it through their IP and not that of the Expo. It was the first time that I had tried using either AirPort or ethernet, and was glad my laptop had the AP card installed -- now I can see just how useful it can be.

By this time it was past 17:30 hours and since I was not getting anywhere in my attempts to hook up to the Internet, I decided to call it a day and return to the hotel. It was warm and sunny outside, and I checked at a nearby info booth on how to use the Metro to get back to where I was staying. It was easy enough, so the Metro it was. I had to switch once about halfway along the route, at Concorde, and the rest was a piece of cake.

11 September 2002 - I am still actively working on the trip report/s ......

12 September 2002 - I should try to call Nelson, the press pass holder whom I met and mentioned above, to see if he can figure out a way for me to get online, finally, and get some of these things on my sites -- and perhaps check my AOL emails, which is supposed to be easy. On the 10th, the Expo press room internet connections were down for some reason and I assume that if anyone connected they did so on their own European connections. I shall go to the hotel office now to see how to make my first telephone call in France -- OK, after various trials (it was my first attempt to make a telephone call in France), I finally spoke with Nelson. We made an appointment to meet at the press room tomorrow, the 13th (GAWD, Friday, the 13th!) -- he would bring some connection cable (probably an ethernet cable ??) to hook up with his TiBook or that of his friend who is at the main Apple booth at the Expo. Needless to say I shall have to take notes so that I know exactly what to do when I get to Spain, which hopefully should be somewhat similar?? He said that he knew of a Web Cafe, which might have been useful, but he did not have the address handy, and I may have needed some cable or other anyway.

Stay tuned!

the above was online the afternoon of 13 September from Paris -- the rest, below, will have to wait until I can connect again

13 September 2002 - I took the Metro to the Expo as it is direct, sort of, and cheapo -- they were having some kind of problems with the computers and ticket system, so they just allowed everyone to go through the gates without a ticket, which I thought was nice. There were several with the Expo pass on the train, and many people got off at the Expo stop.

I arrived at the Expo at just before 10h. I had an appointment to meet Nelson at 11h and wanted to leisurely wander around and see more than I did the first time three days ago when I was not as rested.

It was just as crowded as day 1, if not more so -- and on the Metro I saw many with their badges having the attachment thing on it, meaning they had been there before. I brought my attache case with TiBook -- and press pass, of course, which I proudly displayed.

Instead of adding a lot of loose links to photos from the Expo floor, I think I shall put some pics on a separate general Expo view page. When I return to Trenton, I have to scan a lot of stuff and include the pics associated with the text, so this report will not be completely finished until early October, if all goes well -- so check back again next month for more details.

I found some copies of Recording Musicien to bring back for Bernar -- #8 / March 2002 / Prince on the cover; #9 / April 2002 / Bowie on the cover; and #10 / May 2002 / Bob Marley featured on the cover -- each contains a CD which I have not listened to yet.

I was able to obtain the premiere issue of Precision Mac / Découvrez les compétences Unix de votre Mac! -- which appears to be a kewl new UNIX/Jaguar-oriented how-to magazine, complete with CD containing UNIX utilities. The second issue was already at their stand, and also includes a CD -- and this was the last issue of issue #1 and the gal gave it to me with all kinds of questions about the USA and all. I am somewhat amazed that so many people, young and old, speak English fairly well, which contrasts with the first time I was here in the 1960s.

The Wacom exhibit was kewl -- so many tablet models to choose from, and it is amazing what one can do with them! Their many try-it iMacs were occupied, some seemingly by very experienced artists because some of what they were doing was that professionally impressive.

OK, it is now 11h, back to the press room. It was not as active as on opening day, and there were several work stations available. I set up my TiBook and connected, as I did before to the AirPort connection -- none was available -- I suppose whoever had the base station functioning was not there today. I rechecked the couple pages that I wanted to load and made a few changes to things I had overlooked the night before. At this point Nelson arrived and checked what I was using -- OS9.2 -- he and most of the others there use Jaguar. The sheet they had on the wall with the password was still there, but did not work, so he called the guy who went around helping out and asked what was wrong. They then posted another sheet on the wall with a new / correct password! No wonder the dumb thing did not work before -- and just as I suspected, those who were able to get online probably did so using their own IP or whatever!

He attached the ethernet cable. Unfortunately the only browsers I had on the laptop were AOL, and Internet Explorer, which I rarely use because it loads too slow. Netscape, which I did use infrequently, I had deleted entirely because I think the old version I used was corrupted and did not work most of the time -- it used to, and was the only one which seemed to really stream live cams in real time.

Ok, he easily got me online with Explorer, at which point I launched Fetch, and he said he would be back in 30 minutes. To my utter amazement my file list appeared this time! It only took a few minutes to upload the couple dozen pics and new pages and couple updated ones -- then I tried Explorer to see if they were OK and, as usual, it did not work!

Luckily the person next to me left and their European browser was still online, so I used it to look at my new pages. I quickly noticed that the keyboard was the French version, and it took me longer to hunt and peck the keys than it usually does, as many of the letters (and even the period!) are situated differently, some even needing the shift key!

I needed to make a couple adjustments to misplaced links, but I think I got them all working. In theory, what I finished the night before should now be online -- and this new part will have to wait until I am able to get online again, hopefully in a couple days. Unfortunatelyt the symbol for Euro showed up as some strange circle with lines through it that I do not think I ever saw before, so I guess I shall have to change all the Euro glyphs to the word itself!

I tried to get to my eBay ME page to add details that I did leave the country and would attend to any payments for items when I return, but using the damn Explorer browser my changes did not load and I had to leave the page as it was!

I then tried the AOL thing -- OK, so I reached it via Explorer, but the dumb AOL setup was totally different from the usual screens, and I did not see that I could access the aapl board, for example, just being able to read a convoluted version of our AOL emails. I only logged on as MyMastodon and was sort of surprised to find that I only had about 76 emails waiting for me, more than half of which were the usual spams! Only two people wondered what happened to me, and when I went to answer about 6 of them, found that the formats were very different from the AOL reply screens I am used to, so I simply did the best I could, and in as few words as possible. I did send out a general CCC email explaining that my latest news would be in my YES page, so hopefully it went through and everyone got the news of my trip by now.

After I put the laptop back in the attache case, I took a pic of where I was working, with the iMac showing one of my new pages on whatever the European browser that was on it --

you can see my cane and case on the left -- the left sheet of 8.5 x 11 inch paper on the wall to the right of that large thing is the new one with the correct access code for their active link, reached by using the ethernet cable that was lying there loose on the table -- the sheet all the way on the right is the one having the non-usable password! It was now more than a half hour and Nelson had not returned, so I went back on the Expo floor to check out more goodies.

I saw Alexandra again, but did not bother her as she was always mega-busy -- she is the one I originally contacted for the press pass, and although she was extremely helpful and friendly via email, she was even more exceptional in person, and went overboard to accomodate me! Thank you, most sincerely, Alexandra, for helping to make this a wondefully memorable experience for me -- and for the readers of AppleBytes.

Canon was demonstrating their 2 megapixel IXUS V2 digital camera -- holt shit, it was about the size of a pack of cigarettes, contained the same small FlashCard my Nikon uses, and weighs 180g! They put the card in a printer and got virtually instantly the most fabulous prints I have seen in a long time! Now there is a money-making setup for some photo kiosk at any mall!

Another booth had displayed several older hard drives, showing how they work from the inside -- something I had never actually seen before. The larger one dates to about 1996. I found it surprising just how seemingly simple the mechanism is.

Corel had a hands-on setup for elementary teachers, featuring a kewl cartoon character, Adiboy, in an interactive game, as well as their well-known Draw software. Since I only had one pic of me thus far, I asked a Corel gal to take one next to their mascot, Adiboy --

Another education demo really was a wowser! The Promethean ACTIVboard, a normal sized large chalk-board type thing that incorporated touch pen activated drawing, text, color and other functions! I did not have the time to analyze how it worked, but the guy first placed a basic cell schematic on the screen, resized it, wrote and used font-text labels (a couple of which I had to identify/provide!), obscured the labels as in a test, and did other operations with the board.

He then selected components of a chem lab setup from a tool-object bar, with beaker, Bunsen burner, ring stand, liquid in beaker which he colored, a thermometer which he sized as he wished, changed the size of the layout, moved it around on the board, as well as other manipulations! Now there is something every classroom should have! And he said they have a rep in New Jersey! (I think the company may be British).

The I.R.I.S. rep was demonstrating their IRISPen II, a smallish hand-held scanning device which he used to scan the lines of an EXPO information page, and he would then place the lines of text in emails, spread sheets, databases or in other apps. I found this something that I could use somewhat frequently.

I met the BEST MEDIA rep, Volker Mika -- they publish a suite of advertising apps on CD -- Best ad's ... oder Sie schleppen weiter vier Zentner Papier nach Athen... (in English and German) -- which contain 10 years of award winning multi-national ads, which would be indispensible for anyone in the advertising field. The only other classical reference option for these professionals are the several massive (and quite expensive -- I know, I have sold them on eBay!) yearly tomes of prize-winning international graphic design in tomes such as GRAPHIS ANNUAL and the AIGA annual. He kindly provided me with a demo disk which I have just viewed. One of their apps contains 10,000 of the world's best ads of the 90s, organized in several ways, and they are prima sources for quicky ideas for current projects.

I found it very curious that AOL, although apparently they do have a presence in France, was not represented -- at least I could not find their booth anywhere, and they are not listed as exhibitors. I did not see their CDs or anything else for that matter in any of the computer shops or places where I usually find them in over abundance in my area of New Jersey. This would have been an absolutely must show if they wanted to gain subscriptions to their online service in France and other European nations. Either someone in promotions goofed, or they just do not have the staff to foster their service?? Hey, I am available, and I am somewhat fluent in German (where they do have service) and Spanish (where they have not yet appeared -- are they not in Argentina already, or am I thinking of all-encompassing octopus-like eBay??). Come on, guys, get on the ball or miss the boat -- it is about to leave!

There was a section in the far end with numerous medical/dental apps, which I found fascinating. In other booth groupings were apps for architects, and music, and games, and advertising, and just about any other specialized area you could imagine, and each with demos and hands-on experience using the latest Apple puters, and Jaguar, of course! The only other major shows that I had attended previously were antique, cat and garden shows, and they palled in comparison to the offerings at this Expo! It was sort of like going into an old fashioned candy store and wanting one of this, and two of that -- and, oh yes, a couple of those over there in the corner! People were still buying and lugging boxes away with them, and the supply rooms which I could see were stocked with all of the Mac desktop models, although I did not notice as many PowerBooks anywhere. They were common in the press room!

The visitors (and reps) were of all ages and both sexes -- and I heard English and German spoken, some Spanish, and there were many of oriental heritage there as well. It was extremely well organized / clean / inviting / friendly -- there was much descriptive material to be had -- and I not only got a load of brochures and catalogues / magazines, but also promo CDs, pens of several flavors, a leather-covered exercise ball (which I may use for an elbow rest), a kewl CD shrink wrap slicer from Roxio, note blocks (quadriculated), energy bars and mints, more pics than I have ever taken over a 6 day period (56 thus far for the Expo and Paris), some drinks and snacks at 2 VIP areas -- I was able to send my news (at least part of it) to my web sites all the way from across the Atlantic, and just thoroughly enjoyed myself -- while walking and sleeping more than I have in years, taking more CELEBREX than I usually like to (1/day) -- and above all, learning new things!

I do not know if Apple provided all the iMacs, new Towers, laptops and flat panel displays that were everywhere in abundance or whether each company had to bring their own?? Do they sell them later at a reduced price as demo models?

I returned several times to the press room looking for Nelson, but he was nowhere in sight. At this point it was nearing 16h, and my legs were telling me to stop already or I would have to carry them home! When I return to Trenton I shall scan a few things and add them in October, so bookmark this page and stop back next month.

J'espère vous revoir. -- Espero verte otra vez. -- Ich hoffe, dich wieder zu sehen. -- Spero di vederlo ancora.

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