BostonPocketPC

On the last night of CES I was in Las Vegas, Johan and I went to the Media Center Show and met up with various guests and contributors to the show. Our host of course was the infallible Ian Dixon. Thanks to Paul Heitlinger from S1Digital for sponsoring the room and then we split the cost of the food up evenly (actually using the calculator on Ian's HP Tablet PC) which was a very bountiful "all you can eat buffet" at the Paris Hotel Le Village Buffet. A good thing too because the line out the door to get in had an hour wait. After dining in Vegas for 5 days straight Johan and I could only put down one plateful of the rich food before we left to catch our plane home.

Here are a few shots of the night:

Our host Ian Dixon, making the most of his time and putting together a few interviews between bites. I did get to talk to him on the way to the buffet line and he has had a very good CES and plans on sharing it all with his listeners. So be sure to check out his updates on The Media Center Show.

At our table was Ted Singh of Embedded Automation and his lovely wife are on the right in the first picture on the left. To the right of Ted is Microsoft's David Bradley, Business Development Manager of the OEM Digital Home division. To the left of him if I remember correctly was Ben Smelley, Manager of Product Development & Quality Control for Velocity Micro, who told me about not only some of their new systems that were shown at CES including a notebook pc called the NoteMagix C90 Ultra, but also about their new NetMagix HQ HomeServer. We also nudged David about pushing for a Home Server/Media Center merge in one box. All we got was, "Yes we have been asked this alot and it is being looked into." The rest of the dinner conversation was about soccer another passion we all shared. To the left of Randy is Chris Morley of Omaura. I told him that the designs they have are some of the most impressive ones I have seen for Media Center. To the left of him is BPPC's own Johan Van Mierlo.

Closest on the right is Adam Fitch from One Voice. The blurry one on the left in picture on the right is Ed Bott from ZDNet. I think Ed and I ran into each other like 11 times during CES and at other events. He is still one of the rare few that really get it.(he is also in the left picture below a bit more clearly)

At the end of the table with the cool hair is Jessica Zahn of Microsoft, she is the one that has been very active in the community answering questions in several online chats as well as on the Green Button forums Ask the Media Center TV Team. However, she told us that she has just recently joined the Social and will be working with the Zune group and her duties will be transitioned to Liz Sanocki and Peter Denniston. We did have a quick conversation at the door when we were leaving and I would loved to ask her more, however the folks at the Green Button did and have some interesting news about DVD streaming being tested and looked into as a possibility. ;)

We didn't get a chance to talk with everyone since our time was limited and we had to catch a flight back home. I really wished we had stayed a little longer and maybe grabbed one of those tasty desserts we passed on the way back to the table. It was a good time and I look forward to hopefully doing something with these people next year. Great job Ian for putting this together last minute!