Noticed in Passing
Some other things I noticed in passing this year. For one, there seemed to be a lot more women both attending and contributing to the conference than in previous years, which was very encouraging. I also noticed the massive volume of inner convention center and outer convention center activities. There were large hands-on venues like The Bridge held on and off-site. There were also smaller activities every day and night held in both convention center rooms and local hotels. So, no matter where you were staying, you could check at your front desk to see what types of SIGGRAPH activities were going on there. These hotel events were generally sponsored by separate companies. (For example, Industrial Light & Magic hosted screenings and discussions at the Hilton Riverside.) Apart for these activities there was SIGGRAPH's own Electronic Theater, which is the showcase for new technology and is a must see.

Kellie-Bea Rainey and Doug Cooper at K-Paul's restaurant. Courtesy of Kellie-Bea Rainey.

As each day went by, there were huge parties to go to. Some were by invitation only (mainly for large company recruitment), but there were others for anyone and everyone. Most of them, considering we were in New Orleans, went on until dawn.

One morning I came back from one of these parties to find that I had only two hours until the keynote address. This year's speaker was Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Knowing if I tried to sleep I'd probably miss him, I made my way over to the convention center to find a ton of people moving into the main presentation hall. Never had I seen so many attendees so enthusiastic about a keynote speech, which I have to admit was most excellent!

Some of the drawbacks to such an exciting week-long conference are not really so bad. There is the lack of sleep, but hey SIGGRAPH is only once a year. Another is that you just couldn't do everything. I should know it's not doable, because I really tried to do just about everything possible each day and night. The last "drawback" is the restricted amount of time spent on your email, cellular phone or pay phones. There was just so much to do, see, and get involved with that if you wanted to communicate and share your experience it was to your benefit to do this directly with anyone and everyone at the conference.

Overall, this year's conference was one of my favorites, but then again I'm addicted and I say that each year.

Kellie-Bea Rainey has been in the entertainment industry for four years. She has working in visual special effects for many top feature films. She has also worked in animation (traditional and computer 2D and 3D), including interactive multimedia and online environments as a production coordinator, production manager and as a producer.