[Disclaimer: the following comments are my own based on my own perception of events. Provided as-is and confers no rights]
Wow, things have been so busy here at CES that I'm just getting around to blogging, starting with my promised behind the scenes of the Bill Gates CES 2005 Keynote. I've done a short version and a long version for those who have been emailing, asking me to follow up on my earlier post.
Summary
Wednesday night, Bill Gates hosted the 2005 CES Opening Keynote along with his surprise guest, Late Night’s Conan O’Brien. Overall I think things went well, but as can happen with live events with so many variables, there were a couple of technical issues noted by sites like Engadget. The key thing for me that I could have done a better job on-stage pointing out is that despite a small glitch with a remote control (IR) receiver, a single Media Center ran all the Media Center demos and we kept rolling despite the hiccup. According to the postmortem, it appears a 2nd IR receiver run over to Bill's seat failed, so the Media Center never got the signal. It could have been all the IR interference in the venue- cameras and plasma displays and lights, or the powered USB booster - a piece of equipment that gets a USB signal over a long-stretch. The production team also handled a small power outage exceptionally well in the minutes leading up which might have contributed. These things happen and the team pulled it out despite some obstacles out of their control.
Below is my account of what was happening back stage.
Rehearsals
Setup and runthroughs went great the day before and day of. We did about a half-dozen individual runthroughs and 3-4 end to end runthroughs. Everything was running great except for an intermittent Internet bandwidth issue. We replaced a router and that appeared to solve part of the problem but bandwidth continued to be intermittent as I noted in my previous entry.
15 Minutes Till Showtime: Makeup
Yes, we had to wear makeup. I sat in a chair next to Conan and we discussed our Irish roots and he was cracking jokes. The night before, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to have dinner with Conan and a few folks from his Late Night team at Nobu in the Hard Rock Hotel. What a great guy, a great storyteller and super-funny. I can see why he's been announced as the next host of The Tonight Show when Jay steps down.
Showtime!
For the account below, here are my own thoughts and the timing is approximate thanks to Engadget :)
6:30pm
- Everyone is charged up and ready to go. Gary Shapiro, President of the CEA (host of CES) is getting ready to go on-stage. But first a little background - in order to drive the slides and overall production coordination, a sort of "Mission Control" is set up backstage to drive the technical systems – slides, prompters, timers etc. We're settling in for Conan's monologue when two electrical engineers walk behind the main operations tables to check a piece of equipment. From my vantage point, one the UPSes (Uninterruptable Power Supplies) has been triggered and they're troubleshooting.
6:31pm - Everything is still running- troubleshooting is going on in the dark with flashlights, more engineers and members of the production crew are working methodically, as the UPS is running down, tracing connections, circuits. I'm standing clear w/ my team going over what I want to say. I find out later the presentation systems are all on the same UPS- slides moved to backup and systems are being powered down.
6:40pm – The UPS is going. The Xboxes for the Forza Racing game sneak preview demos (which we had back stage due to space restrictions on stage) lost power. It appears the main demo systems on-stage weren't affected except for Xbox from what I can tell. Their bringing their demos back up.
6:41pm - Keynote starts. We're looking good- the power circuit is back but the production team decides to continue on backup PPT cuing systems as best I can tell. The show must go on. :)
7:09pm - Bill is showing the Nikon D2X WiFi-enabled digital camera. The pictures transfer flawlessly to the Media Center. People up-front saw them pop into Media Center's My Pictures UI. But Bill's Media Center remote control isn't working. In order to provide clear lines for receiving the IR signal from both Bill's chair and my demos across stage next to the same Media Center, we have a USB-based IR receiver w/ a powered USB booster running to Bill & Conan's area. Sure, we could have had two Media Centers, but we wanted to show it all running off the same Media Center as a hub.
In our postmortem, the team thinks one of two things happened- the USB booster failed or two much IR interference on-stage. We tested for this prior and ran into some minor issues with Plasma TVs used for timers and prompters creating interference on another system but Bill's remote control was never an issue - moving the displays fixed the problem. Of course, we didn't have cameras going off regularly with IR autofocus during the runthroughs. The audience can see the pictures but everyone on-stage is seeing thumbnails. It happened so fast, people just see Bill clicking.
7:10pm - At this point one the production team has gone out and tries to troubleshoot, they thought they had the IR repeater working but it was not so they move on.
It's a tough situation. My demos use the same Media Center PC Bill is using- it’s as real-world as we can simulate on-stage. The Digitrex 40" HDTV streams WMV HD video right off of same Media Center. I'm sure the system itself isn't the issue. I'm about to go on-stage and I grab the Director of the show.
"I'm pretty sure I can get the slideshow up. If I can, do you want me to pass back to Conan and Bill to finish their segment?"
"Can you do it? Can you ad-lib it?"
"Yes, it'll be funny."
"Go for it"
The slides were hilarious, (copy located here) and done by Conan’s emmy-award-winning team spoofing Bill and Conan's night out in Las Vegas, so I wanted everyone to be able to see them. Bill introduces me and I walked out on-stage. Some may not have noticed as I came out, I pulled the plug on the bad IR receiver that failed just to be safe. I grab a remote and the built-in IR receiver on the Alienware Media Center is working just fine. Once I realize this, I threw back to Conan and Bill and the slideshow is running running- Conan jokes he can't take this much direction and rolls with it, everyone's laughing in a fun way. Bill is smiling, I'm smiling. The slides are a huge hit with the audience. Here we go.
I ad-libbed the photos section and music section to bridge back and I'm into my demo. My demos go off without an issue until I get to MSN Remote Record which is dependent upon the Internet connection and a Passport login that times out for security reasons. I had to refresh the page, but the Internet connection was slow. I ad-libbed for a few seconds and moved on. Someone shouted front-stage that the service was back up, but I had already moved on and we were over time. In hindsight, I should have come back to it, but c'est la vie...
The rest of my demos including the new LG LRM-519 DVD Recorder with DVR software by Microsoft worked exactly according to plan. The Digitrex 40" LCD HDTV with Windows Media Connect technology streamed the WMV HD movie downloaded earlier to the same Alienware Media Center PC we used throughout the demos. Yes, there's the applause :). The rest of the Digital Media and TV demos work great.
As for the Xbox demo, CES is traditionally a time to give a sneak preview of products coming later in the year and that's the risk you run when demoing unreleased software. I'm sure the power glitch didn't help. If you get a chance, you should definitely check it out at the Microsoft CES Booth- amazing game.
My Final Thoughts
BIG kudos go to the production team and the demo team - I'm so proud of how they handled the situation overall with some challenges, and how they kept things moving. Coming off the Windows Digital Entertainment Anywhere event in Los Angeles in October, this was the same production team and that event went flawlessly there. Sometimes things happen out of your control- you can be prepared, but you just have to roll with it.
As for whether I'll do another keynote like this again, sure thing. I'm just super-jazzed about what we're building for today and tomorrow and I get a kick out of showing it to others as I've been doing in our booth. Or maybe I'm just an adrenaline junkie :). Either way, the booth is packed, there's a TON of interest in the products shown and people are checking it out for themselves. When I'm not in meetings or the booth, I'm checking out some really cool stuff that Engadget and others are blogging on.
More on other CES happenings to come soon... ;)