Mac Social Scene

The Night Life at Macworld

Ryan J. Bonnell Skip to comments 0 Comments (Comments Disabled Disabled)

The staff at MacZealots explores the social scene and night life of the Macworld Conference.

The Macworld Conference & Expo is indisputably the single biggest media event of the year in the Apple community. People from all reaches of the globe travel to San Francisco in hope of seeing first hand what hot new Apple products and technology will set the pace in the upcoming year.

Part of Apple's success to attract people to this conference is the "hype" they create, and no one does it better than the chief himself, Steve Jobs. The excitement peaks at the keynote and follows thru to the exhibition floor, but what's left to explore at the end of the day? MacZealots took this question to heart and used the opportunity to better explore the Mac "social scene" at the Macworld Conference.

Party for the People

The first event we attended was on Tuesday night dubbed the "Party for the People" and was organized by Deb Shadovitz and held at the Renaissance Parc55 Hotel, a luxurious downtown San Francisco hotel just two blocks from the renowned Union Square.

The evening started around 8:00 p.m. with hor d'oeuvres and conversation and transcended into cocktails and Mac trivia questions. The evening's crowd carried the conference's enthusiasm into the gathering, and within the first hour the crowd had grown to consume the entire piano bar on the second floor lounge.

A small break was taken in the middle of the event to answer some Mac trivia questions and to give out some prizes. The questions ranged from general Apple trivia facts, to facts Steve had given out in the keynote, to Apple product appearances in movies, to stumping questions no one could answer.

The trivia questions were concluded with a guest appearance by Andy Ihnatko, a columnist and writer on technical and computer issues for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Many different prizes were given away, but only to those who answered the Mac trivia questions correctly. Our own MacZealots' writer, Ryan J. Bonnell was lucky enough to win one of the prizes, a Photoshop filters book.

The evening continued with people continuing to mingle after the trivia questions, but it was evident people came mainly for the food, prizes and social interaction as the event winded down after everyone had finished up their drinks.

We were able to take a few photos from the event, and they can be viewed on in our Party for the People photoset.

Mac Small Business Dinner

The next event we partook in was the Mac Small Business Dinner, hosted by Niall Kennedy, Community Manager at Technorati and held at the Chaat Cafe, less than a block from the Moscone Center.

We were anxiously looking forward to this event, as many of the developers and notables in the Apple and web development communities were to be there. The Chaat Café offered an ideal location, offering great food at a reasonable price and of course complimentary wireless Internet—a near staple in any “geek dinner”.

The atmosphere of this event was entirely different than the previous nights', evident by the tighter social interaction and younger generation of the attendees. If the Party of the People was really a party for the people, then the Mac Small Business Dinner was for entrepreneurs, software engineers, and web developers.

Drinks were flowing freely and a lot of great discussion and ideas were being shared and evangelized. Of course, dozens of business cards were exchanged at the dinner and a lot of cool shwag was given away. Blake Buriss of Cocoa Radio was handing out stickers, as was Tantek Celik of Technorati. Possibly the coolest take-away of the evening was the ingenious business cards handed out by My Comic Life. Part business card and part "black book", these little gems had tiny little pen and sticky notes for jotting down information or getting people's phone numbers. Even if you didn't know there was a conference going on, you'd expect to see these type of things at Macworld or Apple's WWDC, not at any Windows' developer's conference.

The dinner had a huge turnout, and in some ways turned out to a Mac celebrity event. A short sampling of the attendees included (in no particular order):

While we couldn't get around to meet everyone at the event and list everyone here, we encourage those we missed to leave your name and/or business in the comments. We were also able to take a few photos from the event, and have posted them to our Mac Small Business photoset.

The After Party

The Macworld Conference experience offers a great opportunity for consumers, developers, and users to all interact in one central location, but it's really the social interaction among the attendees that really makes the entire expo complete. Where else can you see the latest and greatest from Apple, meet passionate people from all reaches of the world, and buy a drink for the developer of your favorite application? In our perfect little Macintosh world, we call it Macworld San Francisco.

Ryan J. BonnellRyan J. Bonnell is a Web Developer, Student, and leading contributor to MacZealots.com. When he is not playing around with his endless amount of toys, he can be reached at .