KRI Conference Day 2
Apr. 2nd, 2005 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walbournDid my presentations this afternoon, and they seemed to go well. ATI has a room for doing sponsored sessions all weekend, and they kindly offered to host my visit and give me about an hour and a half to speak. About half the ATI presenters were speaking in English, so we got about 35-45 people listening to the presentation and then doing Q/A through a translator. Seemed to work out and they asked a lot of good questions. Of course, my second talk was on the next version of DirectX coming with "Longhorn", so there were a half-dozen Russian technical press people eagerly listening in. I just hope I don't get fired for anything I said--I made a point of trying to not say anything more than the public DirectX futures talk given by a MS Architect at GDC, but still the marketing people are getting twitchy.
After the show today, we were driven across town to a club for a conference party. I am at a loss of words to properly describe the event. The club itself was crazy: chandeliers everywhere, multi-level floors with a mix of Plexiglas and marble panels, a cabaret stage, a bar a with a 'stripper pole' dance stage complete with mirrors, a dance floor that looked like it was a mini-Studio 54, bowling lanes, hookahs, pool tables, even a aquarium with a crocodile and a little mouse running around the top waiting for feeding time. Room after room that barely looked like they belonged in the same city, much less the same building. Hugh Hefner would have been proud. There was finger food, (warm) beer, liquor and wine, topless dancing girls, male stripper dancers--there are a fair number of women in attendance at the conference, so I'm guessing it was meant to provide beefcake with the cheesecake--naked girls being body-painted for a contest, musicians playing classic Russian instruments to accompany 90s club dance music. It was insane. I have never seen a technical event party like it, nor do I expect to again.
I have pictures. They are so not work safe.
The scary thing is that from the descriptions I've heard of previous 'nights on the town' in Moscow, tonight's party was tame. Russians know how to party.
BTW, apparently metal detectors are the Russian equivalent of velvet ropes. At the conference and at the party you are required to pass through metal detectors, but they don't seem to care if you set it off or not. They might make you pass your bag around, but they don't do a real search. Maybe they are suspicious if you don't set off the metal detector?
After the show today, we were driven across town to a club for a conference party. I am at a loss of words to properly describe the event. The club itself was crazy: chandeliers everywhere, multi-level floors with a mix of Plexiglas and marble panels, a cabaret stage, a bar a with a 'stripper pole' dance stage complete with mirrors, a dance floor that looked like it was a mini-Studio 54, bowling lanes, hookahs, pool tables, even a aquarium with a crocodile and a little mouse running around the top waiting for feeding time. Room after room that barely looked like they belonged in the same city, much less the same building. Hugh Hefner would have been proud. There was finger food, (warm) beer, liquor and wine, topless dancing girls, male stripper dancers--there are a fair number of women in attendance at the conference, so I'm guessing it was meant to provide beefcake with the cheesecake--naked girls being body-painted for a contest, musicians playing classic Russian instruments to accompany 90s club dance music. It was insane. I have never seen a technical event party like it, nor do I expect to again.
I have pictures. They are so not work safe.
The scary thing is that from the descriptions I've heard of previous 'nights on the town' in Moscow, tonight's party was tame. Russians know how to party.
BTW, apparently metal detectors are the Russian equivalent of velvet ropes. At the conference and at the party you are required to pass through metal detectors, but they don't seem to care if you set it off or not. They might make you pass your bag around, but they don't do a real search. Maybe they are suspicious if you don't set off the metal detector?
