The Tablet PC & UMPC Community Gathering @ CES 2008 put together by Lora Heiny was again another big success! Food and Drinks were supplied by Microsoft, JKOnTheRun, and TabletLawyer. The sponsorship didn't end there. Several Tablet PCs and other give away's were also handed out and several were handed back to the delight of the gathered crowd. People were coming and going through out the event. I did manage to get a quick head count of 86 people during the sit down eating portion of the event. So it was the a nice comfortable size. Biggest complaint of the night was that not everyone got to talk to each other and there wasn't enough time to mingle.
Warren Crocker served as MC for the event. His loud voice soon got everyone's attention and got the word out when needed. We can see that his Life on a Wicked Stage in the theatre has other great uses as well. :)
Conversation and comradery were never short through out the whole event. Old friends and new had much to talk about, well Tablet PCs an their smaller cousins UMPCs of course.
Warren Crocker showing off some of the prizes to be had in the drawing. That is Daniel Gentleman aka Thoughtfix of TabletBlog in the lower right hand corner of several of these shots. He did CES on all Linux based equipment and seemed to be everywhere we were.
Throughout the event the crowd grew and grew and swelled at over 80.
Alot of prizes and Tablet PCs were out on display for people to play and ogle at.
Warren Crocker thinks deeply about Tablet PCs and continues his conversation with Matt Miller.
Otto Berkes, general manager of the Mobile Platforms Division aka Origami at Microsoft Corp
. even showed up to talk about UMPCs. It had been a while since we first met.
Mike Temporale of SmartphoneThoughts receiving a demo of the Nokia Tablet the Nokia N810 from Jussi Makinen, the Product Markeing Manager of Convergence Products for Nokia.
There was a lot of talk about the new Tablet PCs that were brought for demo and giveaway.
Warren Crocker from GottaBeMobile welcoming people to the meetup and James Kendrick making sure Eric and Betsy get their drink orders in.
Eric Hicks of BPPC and Betsy Weber of TechSmith sharing some smiles with Eric praising SnagIt and Camtasia Studio and Betsy telling him about all the new features in Camtasia Studio 5.
In the middle of the dinner James Kendrick said a few words about our good friend, Marc Orchant. A toast of warm thoughts was shared as well thoughts and stories of how Marc had touched each of us. If you knew Marc this was something he would have wanted to be here with other influencers and enthusiasts of Tablet PCs and he was!
Kristin Golliher from Otterbox made sure each us got a card in for the drawing however, most of us pulled our cards or got our cards removed for us after winning to let others get the coveted prizes.
Since the open free WiFi access point wasn't working Johan and Eric turned on their Windows Mobile devices and shared their fast connections with the gathered crowd using WMWiFiRouter.
The NoahPad UMPC was a huge hit. Being hung on a coat hanger to show its rigidity and hands free usage when you are doing something else. Also demoed was the blind typing of the inverted QWERTY keyboard simply amazing! The 7" screen also is capable of displaying a 10" screen virtually.
We had several Tablet PCs at our table, many demos were being done.
Somehow orders were placed. Matt Miller and Chris Aarons of BuzzCorps chatting it up.
While items were being shown for giveaway Fujitsu on the fly offered up a U810 with any configuration the winner desires as Rob Bushway and Lora Heiny look on in appreciation. Johan even got into the spirit and gave away a ProClip mount to an owner of an OQO.
After eating there was a gathering for the giveaways.
Tablet Kiosk gives away a few things.
James Kendrick and Kevin Tofel of JKOnTheRun look on as some items are given back for giveaway. Kevin was able to keep his copy of Camtasia Pro from Betsy Weber and TechSmith given in the picture below left with another winner.
Stacy Wolff of HP showing off the TX2000 and limited edition bag. The first winner of the HP TX2000 had to return it since he was a Motion Computing employee! Well he wanted to "regift it", but was told to give it back. :)
Otto Berkes and Sierra Modro look on with hopes of coming away with some new hardware and accessories.
Some lucky Otterbox winners.
Joan Heiny (picture on the left) won a Motion Computing Tablet PC last year and waited until Dec 28th, 2007 to select her Motion LE1700 with View Anywhere display. The current winner(picture on the right) a Medical student was eyeing the Motion C5, but may do the same and hold out until the end of 2008 he told Eric.
Some very durable Tablet PCs were also demonstrated and dropped on the floor several times by Matt Miller (which seemed to be a popular name at this event) of Mobile Demand
After the drawings people stood hung out for a few hours after. A good time was had by all proof showing that community gatherings of this type do work! Thanks to all those that put this together and for everyone for showing up.