So now the CAF jury deadline is April 19, and that will allow us to be more open to our submitters, specifically to people in academia, since most academic years end in April and it's really, really difficult to have anything of the caliber of SIGGRAPH done way back in January or February -- you're basically cutting out a whole semester. So this is a huge thing for schools. It helps a little bit with the production community, but then they're always fighting with their summer release schedules, so we've got curated pathways to get those in and also late-breaking deadlines. The makeup of the ET, at least since 2006, has always been to show a great variety to have a really great show, not to be the best of the best, and everything else is in the Animation Theater.

BD: And Real-Time Rendering is back?

TM: Yes, and the specific, tweaked name for that this year is Live Real-Time Demos, and we're very excited about that: it was a huge success last year. And it's a great combination of our two conference subtitles: Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.

The ET will return either as the Electronic Theater or the Evening Theater.

TM: That was part of our pulling back to our core and really focusing on what's most important and what's most cost-effective. This year was still being very cost-conscious because we know how hard the economy is for everybody. We love FJORG! and it's not going to be dead forever, but just not this year.

BD: And Emerging Technologies?

TM: Yep, the standard, fun, wacky, hands-on stuff you've always come to know and love. And what we've done this year is combined a single, open space for E Tech, the Art Gallery and The Studio because the Art Gallery, headed by Richard Elaver, is themed TouchPoint: Haptic Exchange Between Digits, and that's what E Tech is about and what The Studio is about, so it made sense to have that shared experience in the same space.

BD: What are you looking forward to personally this year?

TM: The evolution of stereo 3-D, of course, is going to be a highlight of the conference and part of the festival and general programs. That's more of an expanding across the whole industry rather than strictly a new tech, of course. But really for me, personally, as conference chair, I'm excited about the people: the main vision of the conference is really resonating with the program volunteers and the contractors and the attendees, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how the people interact with all this stuff, because, in general, the industry isn't so much exploding with brand new stuff every year, as you know better than almost anybody. But this year in L.A., in your backyard, the downtown, Nokia, Staple Center valet easily around the conference center and they put in a billion dollars down there, and our headquarters hotel is the brand new JW Marriot Ritz-Carlton, so, again, it's all about the attendees and the experience of people attending in downtown L.A. in 2010 is going to blow people away. They are not going to have any idea of what to expect until they get there.

Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN & VFXWorld.