chase the light

I say this every year but it’s not what it used to be. Of course it’s not as the show floor has shrunk massively since the late 90’s but the conference itself with talks and demonstrations seems pretty robust. It still holds a place in my heart. The second photo above is where the registration was. You used to have to wait in massive lines or go the weekend before to pick up your badge. We were the only ones in there and got our badges in about 1 minute. My first taste of Siggraph was in Los Angeles ’95, but the 1996 New Orleans conference I think we can all agree might have been the best Siggraph ever. My gawd the parties, the attendance, and show floor were huge and I nabbed an interview with Disney Feature Animation and my career jump started there. Everyone else turned me down. Ha! I had to sit on my job offer for almost 7 months because the job didn’t start until 1997. So I plugged away at my other jobs while I waited to start. Crazy times. I took my son a few years ago to his first Siggraph and he got to play some of the games that students had made at their University and he seemed intrigued by it all. I got him a pass this year and we walked the show floor together at lunch and it was cool to see him light up about certain things and shrug at boring things. Oddly enough not a lot of A.I. wording around. I didn’t see a single mention of it on signs or from presenters although a lot of software is just integrating it.