I’m visiting our Bay Area office this week, which gives me a chance to get a healthy dose of schmoozing in. (Not much goes on in the DC area.) So Sunday night, I took a circuitous route from the Oakland airport to Foster City by way of downtown San Francisco and Davis Freeberg. I introduced him to Guitar Hero and was happy to see someone worse than me (for now)!
Last night, I was double booked… First I hit the HD blogger event coordinated by Jeremy Toeman‘s new consulting company. The main sponsor was Monster, though other companies such as Pioneer, EA Sports, and Disney were also present. (That’s me with “Head Monster” Noel Lee and his son Kevin “Little Monster.”) I had some tasty hors d’oeuvres while chatting with blogging buds Brian Lam (Gizmodo), Ryan Block (Engadget), Thomas Hawk, and Alexander Grundner (eHomeUpgrade).
On the product side, I spent most of my time at the $110,000 rig that analyzes signals passing through HDMI cables. Too bad they wouldn’t reveal who manufactured the cable that failed the test. I mentioned my short-distance Monoprice cables, and they didn’t blink – so I think I’m OK. ;) However, my real motivation at this station was to determine if I could use a Monster HDMI cable of ~25′ around corners and thru a wall without amplification for multi-room viewing. The product manager engineer guy guaranteed I could. If I give it a shot, I’ll post of course.
My second stop was the NewTeeVee Pier Screening. Getting there late, I missed the cocktail party and the theater was packed. So I hung out in the lobby with Gabe Rivera, the mastermind behind my favorite site for keeping current: Techmeme. I also had about 60 seconds with pal Om Malik before the crowd reclaimed him.
Man, I really need to find a job in the Bay Area and move the hell back out there.
You would have loved the HD event — all vendors were Blu-ray fan boys! Thomas Hawk posted a few photos on Zooomr of some of the people attending.
Looks like we just missed each other. I got home from SF last night. Going to Seattle for Gnomedex?
Damn, dude – didn’t know you were here. I won’t be a Gnomedex, but let’s meet up in MD in the next week or so.