Dylan Greene dot com

To give you an idea of the scale of the keynote room, I went behind stage, and found an entire city of technicians, tons of computers, and video equipment. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my decade of conference experience. Here's some facts:

1) There are 16 screens. Four, up front are are 22.5 feet by 30 feet. The rest are 15 feet by 20 feet. Each screen has two projectors. Each projector costs $125,000. There are 32 of them here. Each projector spits out 16,000 lumens. To put that in perspective, your standard office projector spits out 600 to 1000 lumens. So, each screen is about 20 times brighter than your average office projector. Each screen will be delivering up to 1900x1600 resolution (which is what we'll be showing Longhorn at).

They designed the entire hall to not have a bad seat. I just watched them practice the keynotes and my view in the back was just as good as in the front.

2) The audio system consists of 60 speakers driven by some bad-ass amps.

3) The power usage is amazing. There's more cables strung around back stage than you'll probably see on the Golden Gate Bridge. 400 amps for the audio. 300 amps for the projectors. Two separate 400 amp drops for the lighting.

The guy giving me the tour, Joe Kassel, tells me this is about the most technically difficult show that he's participated in.