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Microsoft Has No Power at Mix06

Posted on March 20, 2006
Filed Under Daily Links |

How much petty cash would it cost to send someone with a keen eye on conversations (Scoble!!!) down to the hardware store, grab 40 garden power extension coils, and then plug in some power strips to these and spread them throughout all the rooms?

O’Reilly have their own DIY power boards they seem to take everywhere with them - does Tim have some in his room? Or some gaffa tape so you he can ‘Make’ some?

If we’re expected to tag, post, mix, remix, and have a conversation, then we can’t be limited to the 90 minutes that you can be sure you’ll have power on your laptop - if Microsoft are listening, they have two and a half days to prove it.

Update: Robert Scoble has pointed out that there are fire regs stoppping cables in the floor. All well and good and practical, but it doesn’t really solve the main problem. I also note some nice balck and yellow tape over the power cables from the wall to the tables in the Press Room.

Comments

4 Responses to “Microsoft Has No Power at Mix06”

Robert Scoble on March 20th, 2006 22:52

I already sent your blog to our conference team. The fire marshall keeps us from putting cords across the floor. Sigh.
Chris Green on March 21st, 2006 2:30

Then one has to ask - assuming that providing some power into the meeting rooms wasn’t overlooked by the organisers in the first place - is the Venetian the right place to be running an event such as this?
Robert Scoble on March 21st, 2006 2:57

Chris: I’ve been in dozens of venues and I haven’t yet seen one that can handle 1,500 people, and also have good wifi and power coverage in a venue where people want to visit. It is a real problem.
Ewan on March 21st, 2006 3:15

Robert, thats no reason for Microsoft not to try!

The Wi-Fi bandwidth is an issue that takes more planning (and people remembering not to go VPN on the network) but there should be a solution thats portable to bring to conferences. Folk like Cisco must be able to deal with this.

In terms of power though, that’s more immediate and to me obvious. I’m not asking for 1500 power points, but if there were say ten ‘boards’ each with two strips on them, thats between 100 and 120 points equally spaced through the main seminar hall, for example. I’m sure people can say “I have 50% now, if you’re empty grab my spot.” The press room seemed to be accomodating for everyone. And then people can prepare posts with offline tools, get down keynote notes in OneNote (or notepad.exe) and then post them as soon as possible afterwards - its much better than using the Mix06 A4 notepads and then trying to read our own shorthand!