IDF Day One Whirlwind

posted by Charlene Zvolanek on September 23, 2009

There was so much to see on the first day of IDF that I got completely swept up in the hustle and bustle—absorbing the environment and meeting a whole slew of new people, from developers to business dev to media to Intel Fellows and other sundry rock stars.

I really liked that I could listen to the keynote session over the PA system when I wasn’t able to be in the hall. (Though I preferred being in the hall, because the video and live demos are a big part of the talks.)

The white boards that are installed throughout Moscone Center encourage discussion with questions posed at the top of each board. There is creative collaboration happening all around the IDF.

When I made it into the exhibit hall around 7pm, there were so many vendors I wanted to talk to and watch demos for that I knew I would be back to this space every day to get through all the booths. Once I got them talking, these guys were so engaging that I missed out on the food being served in the middle of the space.

I’m just one of those people who sees opportunities everywhere, and when I was talking to vendors, I gathered cards for my enterprise support services team, for a friend’s data storage company, and for myself—scoring a year license for some really fine anti-virus protection from Kaspersky after a great conversation about the future of mobile security services.

As planned, I did hit the Q&A on design school perspective on innovation, and talked to Joy Medford, the facilitator of the student design program, and Intel senior designer Wendy March, who manages the program. Students and professors talked about the process they went through, and described a few of the projects being displayed. Joy has been running some version of the program in pretty much the same way for over 20 years, and touted the innovation driven by student designers creating for Intel technologies.

Joy talked about the reduction in R&D dollars being spent by U.S. corporations in an effort to save money. She pointed out that, while other nations are investing in innovation at the corporate and public level, the U.S. is at grave risk for losing our ability to compete with new, creative uses of technology. It is in the classroom that innovation thrives. And over the course of the program, technology advances have made it possible for students to not only conceive of amazing new things, but also to prototype them. Intel is leading innovation—not only by engaging students, but by empowering companies to create new and amazing things through direct collaboration with Intel and across companies.

There was an intimate crowd of self-proclaimed geeks huddled around the stage at the Maroon 5 show after the technology showcase closed. It was probably the most polite crowd at a show that I have ever seen, and coming from Austin originally, I’ve spent a lot of time watching live music. No one pushed, shoved, or even bumped each other, even those who had their arms raised to capture video or photos. It may have also been the highest percentage of people recording with mobile devices I’ve ever seen. I even spotted someone shooting video with one of those new iPod Nanos. I got to compare my Flip HD Ultra to the original Flip Ultra—with people who were just as jazzed as I am about the move to microtechnology. IDF is truly a gadget geekfest. I can’t wait to get back to the technology showcase.

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tagged: Flip, IDF, innovate, innovation, Intel Design Expo, Maroon 5, Nano, netbooks, nettops, R&D