Backsplash tile v1.0.

or maybe this one? Backsplash tile v1.1.

The next step is to get high level pricing on the boxes and doors so we can see if we are in the ballpark. Then we can estimate on the cost for the construction elements (electrical, structural, HVAC etc.). I am crossing my fingers!

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In a recent Bloomberg article, HP is focusing on design to help it widen its lead over 2nd place Dell in terms of sales of computers. With an eye to Apple, it has started producing machines in a variety of colors and materials that challenge previous wisdom that computers are “boring beige boxes.”

Taking a page from one of its competitors is nothing new in the PC business but HP is aiming to deliver “lighter, more stylish laptops at prices that beat or match those of Dell. With little to separate the machines’ performance, design may be the tipping point.” As Roger Kay president of researcher Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc. in Wayland, Massachusetts explains, “They’re not charging a premium for design — they’re just doing great design.”

What is really interesting is the way HP is introducing design to its line-up. Since the company started to understand that design is a differentiator, they have made “cultural shifts” in order to foster this type of thinking within the ranks. In an early meeting with designers, PC chief Todd Bradley told employees that PCs should be an “object of desire and possession” and that designers had permission to explore form and function not just cut costs. “Not only did they have the permission to be creative and design beautiful products, it was a mandate,” said Bradley, 49. “We made design a very visible priority.”

The team even has a different physical environment in which to work reflecting the increased focus on design with frosted glass Hermann Miller partitions rather than the grey cubes housing workers in the rest of the company.

The team is challenged to think about all aspects of the value chain, not only the end product. For instance, the company is re-thinking its shipping process, slimming down the amount of packaging used not only to cut costs and get more units on a skid but using less polystyrene is better for the environment. In looking at the way colors and designs are laid down on the laptop cases the company switched to a process called imprinting which is used in car detailing and fuses the designs right onto the material. This has improved the yield of units coming off the assembly line to 90% from 60%. In fact HP is working with BestBuy to offer special edition notebooks to target groups such as students, gamers and women.

This focus on design is estimated in a recent Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. report to help boost sales 6% over its rivals in the coming year as customers in challenging times become more discerning in their PC purchases. Not one to be outdone, Dell has introduced new colors to its laptop line and is rumoured to be completely revamping its line-up within the year.

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Its not like it is in the middle of the road or even really that close to it. It just seemed to be a magnet for car bumpers and the like.

I think people use our parking area as a turn around because this old shed got more and more dented up over this summer.

…And I didn’t even paint a target on it.

In fact our neighbor is doing a big reno on his house and seems like one of his contractors backed into it by mistake a few months ago. No real problem, because he left a note that it was his fault and a phone number so it just took a while to get things arranged so I could take down the old one and put up the new one.

Taking it down took only about an hour.

The new one was really easy to put together and I’d really recommend it to anyone looking for a 6×6 shed. I even put it together 99% by myself; the only time I needed my wife’s help was to put in the window on the last step which was good because it was pretty cold yesterday and I wanted to get inside!

The new shed went together really well. (Pardon the makeshift nature of the sign.. ahem.)

Now next task is to put up a more permanent barrier in front of it quick to protect it from anyone else. (The one that is there I put together pretty much in the dark from whatever I had on hand.)

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Design at the early stage is fun. The budget prioritization comes later.

One reason that a designer is a real solid addition to a renovation project is their perspective as an “impartial” outside observer (in addition to their skills in assembling trades, know how about the process, design sense… I could go on.) During that first meeting Carol was quite detailed in her approach to finding out how we use our current kitchen and what we’d like to see in an improved one especially what some of our priorities are. This really helped as I think when you live with a situation for a while you overlook some of the big moves you could undertake that would help out further down the line.

One thing I mentioned was currently the fridge sits almost right in front of the rear door, so even though we put in a full glass door (see this post for more on that!) the bulk of the appliance blocks out a fair amount of light from coming into the kitchen. Now normally this wouldn’t be too much of an issue, but given that our house is so narrow and close to our neighbours, we don’t have any side lighting. (We have a narrow window on the dining room, but after about 12:30pm the sun moves around the rear of the house and that area goes into shadow.) The predominant light source is the back of the house since it faces south.

But one of my top 3 frustrations with the current layout is that when all of us come in the back door it is a traffic nightmare with boots, coats, dogs, bags flying everywhere, especially if it is cold or raining out. But I understand that because of the size of the space adding more program to a “kitchen” would be even more of a challenge. But there are always tradeoffs in any type of design job; so rare are those optimum conditions where all the stars align and things work out perfectly. So how are we doing so far?

Carol brought over two sketches: one moved the sink to the extreme south end of the kitchen and moved the range to the opposite end of the counter run. The big move in this one was closing up the existing window (what?) and replacing it with two thinner ones on either side of the HVAC duct. Did I mention there is a duct which supplies the second floor right smack dab in the middle of the rear wall?
The second one moves the fridge pretty much diagonally opposite to where it is now and the sink moves to the west wall. Now it becomes interesting! We took this concept and tweaked it a bit on the weekend so that maybe if we can move that HVAC duct a foot or so to the right, we can have a larger window.

Very rough sketch but you can see that the west wall is alot cleaner as the fridge is now tucked away behind the stub wall.

We are now trying to figure out how to maximize the amount of counter run on the east wall by putting the microwave into the uppers and maybe putting the sink into the corner on a diagonal, but I am not convinced of the diagonal sink and if we did this we’d have to swap the range over to the other side and figure out how to duct the range hood.

Next stage when we see if all this fits is to get preliminary costing on a scheme. Never the fun part because it usually means really getting down to what is important and what is only a nice to have because like everything else, it will come down to priorities and tradeoffs.

Ever had a diagonal sink? Let me know your thoughts!

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Yes that’s right; I said kitchen renovation. The two words that strike fear into any man. Because there are issues with the kitchen. That’s right issues. In our case its a distinct lack of storage and organization on the surface. But of course it goes deeper than that and maybe over the next 6 months or so, we can start to get into how we address those issues.

But for now we’ve brought in a specialist; an Interior Designer who has done many kitchens. So after our first meeting and a long questionaire that we went over, she is putting together a plan to address our ‘wish list.’  I think that our list is so long we’d have to have a kitchen 10 times the size to fit it all in but I am hopeful she can prioritize what we need versus what we want. Tall order yes, but its still the beginning of the project!

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In fact, this used to be the holy grail for marketing; selling more products that the customers maybe didn’t necessarily want. So I’m looking at maybe a return to traditional marketing where actually retailers and manufacturers ask customers what they want and give it to them.

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Now having done innovation from the inside of a large corporation, I can’t agree with his view more. It sounds like he could be talking about my (or I bet 90%) of the organizations out there when he recalls stories from his experience. His view is that many companies still need to be convinced of the value of design and how design affects (and requires) co-ordination with all parts of the organization.

But this is not design (or “Design”) that is the equivalent to window dressing or chrome or garish menus, but really a holistic approach to approaching problems. One of the questions he answered at the conclusion of his talk revolved around how he would characterize design. In addition the aforementioned “way of thinking” he very emphatically stated that it was not traditional problem solving, but a way to facilitate a conversation. In fact he mentioned that design is probably the “most negative” profession out there as it required a continual progression from a blank sheet of paper (millions of possibilities) to exactly one, with all the rest being thrown out!

But seems to be redeeming about this process is the conversation and improvement it causes as the ideas are thrown out; each idea informs the next to make it even better than it could have been on its own. This however, requires that design is supported at the proper level in the corporation, which he noted was part of the success of Apple and part of the continuing lack of progress in the 90% of other organizations currently producing products.

During the early days of Industrial Design, designers such as Walter Teague, Harley Earl and Henry Dreyfuss brought something unique to large organizations; how to differentiate their products based on context. They also had a distinct advantage in the early days as they reported in to very high levels in the company, usually the President or CEO (partially because they were “expensive”) but also because they could bring something distinctive to products which were becoming quite similar in customer’s eyes.

Today most design firms report into levels below senior management (in large organizations) and at this point are “positioned to fail.” He went on to ask the audience several hard questions:

• Is Design an Executive level position at your company?
• If not how can you claim it’s important?
• If it isn’t what message are you delivering to your employees?

The key message was that firms have to stop paying lip service to the value of design and actually incorporate it into the strategic decisions of the company.

This lead to a quote from one of Buxton’s mentors, Alan Kay:

“It takes almost as much creativity to understand a good ida as it is to have it in the first place.”

Upon which Buxton added his corollary:

“It takes even more creativity to make an idea real as it is to have on in the first place,”

which I can wholly agree with given my experience in product development!

So where it really gets interesting is his assertion that you need a design culture, not just products to be successful in a chosen industry and he (of course) gives Apple as an example.

In 1993 when Apple’s stock price was declining, future head designer Jonathan Ives started at the company. Through the next two CEOs the stock price declined further (likely through no fault of Ives) until the Apple board brought Steve Jobs back to the company and the rest, as they say is history, with the introduction of the iMac and later the iconic iPod.

So what did Jobs change? Buxton just mentions that Jobs became the Chief Design Officer and promoted the value of design throughout the company. And the remarkable thing to keep in mind is that he did it with largely the same staff that was around during the previous leaders’ tenure. He really just gave the existing staff the tools they needed and the right support to be able to execute on those good ideas.

You may ask what about the Apple G4 cube and hockey puck mouse? Well design is not always about a straight path to success and those “failures” positioned the company to really hit the ball out of the park on their next endeavors. Which meant that the conversation (and risk tolerance for failure) had to exist in the company or they wouldn’t be able to come back and build successful, game-changing products after previous ones failed to catch on in the market.  And it also suggests that corporate culture can change to support design if it is supported from the top and becomes a part of the organizations conversations to deliver contextual products customers crave.

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He started out by mentioning that one of the working titles for the book was “Why Place Matters” but upon finishing the draft felt that the title of “Who’s your City” really captured the essence of the book better. Because as he noted, with increased global mobility of everything from goods and services to citizens, where you choose to set up shop and live out your life can be a very telling indicator of how successful you’ll be in life.

Common wisdom says that advanced in communication technology combined with advances in transportation technology means that the world would tend to become more decentralized as in “The world is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman. Or basically that with a PC and broadband you would be able to work anywhere. But Florida said this is only about half of the explanation. These advances are not spread evenly throughout the world and as a result, would lead to clustering around certain centers.

As further evidence, this year (2008) more than half of the world’s population will live in cities and that in around 200 or so nations on earth there are only about 40 “Mega-regions” that really matter. These regions have less than 20% of the world’s population but produce more than two-thirds of the world’s output and 80% of the world’s innovation.

But what if you’re unlucky enough to have missed out on the opportunity to be born (or live) in one of these Mega-Regions? How can these areas like Pittsburg or Hamilton (his examples, not mine!) help to transform themselves? There are two main things to recognize:

• Urban policy transforms economic policy (not just social policy);
• People policies are the key to a vibrant economy (attracting Artists, musicians etc.)

The key to understanding this is to keep in mind that the manufacturing jobs that made these “blue-collar” areas great in and around the turn of the 20th century (with Union involvement and increasing wages) have largely disappeared in favour of service economy jobs which are by and large less lucrative. So these cities must fight a battle against a rapidly increasing vacuum, sucking prosperity out of these cities to more “attractive” Mega-Regions.

Another topic that has caused some debate is Florida’s assertion that regions exhibit their own personality and that certain people are drawn to these personalities. Among the five kinds of personalities are “extroverts” and those that are “open to experience.” Those that are open to experience tend to migrate and cluster where they can “identify” with the regional personality. The critical message in this discussion is that one needs to understand the regional profile (and make sure it matches yours at that time) or you won’t be happy with your choice (or lack of choice).

To switch gears Gertler asked Florida what drew him to Toronto (besides the great job opportunity)? His answer surprised more than a few audience members in that he asserted that Toronto is one of two great cities in North America! To further his point he noted that the city is on the upswing and he really sees that he has an ability to make an impact (and it certainly helped his case when he mentioned that the city was a hybrid entertainment/ creative centre, with a heart!)

When asked about the Singles Map, Florida seemed a bit exasperated stating that this is the only thing that the media in the US seems to want to talk about from the book, whereas in Canada, there was a more broad based debate on many aspects of the book. In fact if you look at the map it seems that if you are a single man, the eastern US (and particularly the north east) is the place where you would seem to do all right. His research leads to the conclusion that this clustering occurs even within the dating game, though not sure how this would translate to other segments.

When initially considering cities to relocate to Florida made a map on a napkin with the pros and cons listed and Washington, DC and Toronto rose to the top. He noted that he chose Washington because at the time he thought that he could have an impact and change the entire nation, based on his work. But then Bush got elected… twice, and he pretty much gave up that notion.

In an interesting twist, he asked aloud whether the cities we live in are somehow matched to our situation in life. Even thought it is a tradeoff between our jobs and our lifestyles we do make those calculations based on what we think will match our aspirations at a given point in life. And corporations should become more adept at realizing these choices as they search for talent to help them grow. He noted that Google has become extremely strategic about location and bases some of their decisions based on the “people factor” in the surrounding region.

He then mentioned that Jane Jacobs said Adam Smith had it wrong; cities and people drive development by creating new work and that now instead of government planners, market forces are increasingly responsible for our urban outcomes. Because in the end we have to be responsible for our choices, even if we don’t end up making the decision to move out of our current locations. He also mentioned that in his adopted city of Toronto, he wished its citizens would “stop whining about how bad the city was” and really start to lead to make the city truly great, because in his eyes it seems as if the best days are still in front.

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Alan Cross posed the first question “How will the Millenniums consumer music?” The response from the panel revolved around how these consumers had access to many devices (phones, iPods, computers etc.) and wanted their content to be more mobile, just like they are. Furthermore, they have also shown that they will not be content to wait for content and wanted it faster than previous generations. The conversation turned to convenience and not only getting the content ‘whenever, where-ever,’ but how this generation appears to want to purchase ‘a-la-acarte’ instead of getting a CD with ‘one or two tracks’ they like.

The next question from Alan brought me back to my youth in that he asked “What happened to broad consensus in music?” It seemed to me that back then, there were a few stragglers who liked country or jazz or new wave, but at a certain time everyone liked Kiss or Cheap Trick and God forbid if you didn’t… One of the panelist mentioned that maybe the format imposed this type of restriction on behavior, but now consumers could customize their playlists so it didn’t seem as relevant today.

 But if this is true, what happens to the ’social experience’ of music? The listening party; the ‘tribal experience’ of belonging to the ‘metal heads’ or ‘new wavers?’ Are we really programming to a listenership of ‘one?’ How then could the industry market to this group? One theory was that it had to be an ‘experience’ that was the actual thing being sold, not just the recorded music and perhaps the expectations of selling millions of copies of a track were not based in this new reality.

This led to a lively discussion on the question of whether music is still a unifying force for this generation. Given the prevalence of protest songs of the 60s and 70s and the rebellion songs of the late 70s and early 80s is this generation still expressing themselves through music? Sounds like the jury is still out on this one as there were several theories floated ranging from expression in different ways (rather than writing songs, Millennials were actually joining NGOs and going to Africa)  to a thought that the songs were out there, but we weren’t seeing them.

So amongst the music execs, there is not a whole lot of consensus, although they did agree that the model of selling hardcopy tracks is in transition and the eventual ‘replacement’ for this model is still not certain. Now where is my copy of Live at Budokan

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After a brief introduction by Heather Fraser, David quickly went into his prepared notes. He started off by saying that this session was going to be more about him asking questions to the audience rather than telling the audience what he thought was the right answer, which aligned with his premise that “critical inquiry” was part of the hallmark of successful designers. I’ll get into this a bit further later.

One of his first questions to the audience was “What are the benefits of an Arts Education?” He proposed that a key attribute was being curious about how things worked and to then remain curious throughout life and not be satisfied with the status quo. He delved into this a bit deeper when he later asked the central question, ” Why do business people needed to think more like designers?” His answer came back to the ability to ask the right questions, not necessarily come up with the “Be-all and end-all” product. His rationale was that designers (and business people) who ask the right questions can come up with the right solution for this moment, but guaranteed at some time in the future that solution will not be the right one for all time.

After concluding the formal part of the talk, he took some questions from the audience. One of the first questions was around asking the right questions and this lead to a discussion of whether process was indeed more important than product as he submitted. (One group which really values process is the Government and we know how fast they move on things….)

While he admitted that the government does surround itself with process, process in this context is not the end goal. The key thing to remember is that while products may be right for today’s constraints and opportunities, as these constraints change, designers and business people have to be willing to go back and question the initial assumptions (in the process) to come up with a new “right answer” for the new constraints.  He insisted that the Apple iPod of today may be the Microsoft Zune of tomorrow and given the fast rate of change (especially in technology) this may be something to consider.

But if indeed creativity and artistic intent are valuable skills in society why are they arguably not as highly valued as business and technical skills? It all comes down to (in his estimation) the education system and how imagination in children is eventually supplanted by the ability to determine “right and wrong” answers and to be authorative on subjects.

So how do we then encourage creativity in business people? It really can be learned (I am an example of this!) by never feeling so comforable that “you think you know what you know.” (Or the often heard refrain, “Been there, done that.”) One has to be willing to think be curious about how things work and question assumptions to come up with a “right” solution for the problem at that time.

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We ended up in the store by accident; we were down in a certain area of town that has funky cafes and galleries and wandered into the store just to quickly take a look. Well once you’re in, its hard to leave because its like being at the premier of a Hollywood movie. You can see the stars and it looks like you could reach out and shake their hand but you know that you’ll get in really big trouble if you do. Which means in this case that it seems perfectly logical to spend that amount on a kitchen, but if we do, we’ll end up having to do a whole bunch of other stuff to make sure that it all goes together properly.

Things like making sure all the walls are square (yeah, right) or the floor is level (ha!) or that all the appliances match the design (how much is that integrated double oven?) Because the way I see it, something this nice requires total committment to making it look as good as it does in the showroom. They even have one show kitchen in the store with a tempered acid-etched glass countertop!

But after getting home (and back to reality) we realized that in our pretty small house a kitchen this good would require us to upgrade everything else in the house, including furniture and other fixtures. (Just look at some of the pictures on the site to see what it looks like.) So really you have to commit to the whole package before you plunk down the chequebook.

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You type in your word combos into the box and hope and pray that something relevant comes back in the first 10 entries on the page. Or you can repeat with a slightly different boolean combo. And still hope and pray…

But maybe its not simply in the initial search terms that determine how successful the search for information will be. Maybe if we acknowledge that its really really hard to get back the results we want on the first try, that the way to develop a better search experience is how you engage with the results to refine that search.

 That’s why I was interested in Quintura and more recently in silobreaker.com.  In each case they look at related items in a search visually in order to expose connections to the key search term. Don’t think an item is related? Just get rid of it either by clicking the ‘x’ or in the case of silobreaker, dragging it to the trash.

It makes refining the search more intuitive but also exposes linkages between items by proximity and size. Which helps you understand what the internet google Quintura/Silobreaker thinks of you.

Note: Another visual search engine was launched in Beta called SearchMe. Techcrunch covers it here

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It seems like collaboration is no longer a nice to have but a feature that is really becoming standard when it comes to online products. Notably, Cozimo, LiquidPlanner and some others are taking it to a new level as they are allowing simultaneous work across multiple locations which points to the new, geographically dispersed nature of projects these days. And LiquidTalk allows simultaneous translation across differerent groups all within an IM client.

Social media as a concept is also being rolled up into all products; so much so that Demo is going to stop having a separate grouping for these products. How’s that for validation of a concept?

Gadgets and devices are still around (even thought sometimes it feels like all the services are being delivered inside the browser). Livescribe’s pen

Livescribe’s Pen.

brings your voice (or any audio) to the printed page. Even translation of words into other languages!

And for another audience alltogether (kids 4-8) Leapfrog’s tag system (available Nationwide in June ‘08) gives little ones the ability to interact with books with audio and music with their pen-like reader.

Green has to get bigger at Demo and the buzz around the pavilion was that having only two companies there representing the category was a real letdown. There have got to be more worthy companies out there (besides the great offering from Celsius and GreenPlug.) With the amount of monitors and cpu’s buzzing over the sessions, there is growing awareness of the impact of this sector.

Video is not just for broadcasters anymore and although we’ve know this for a while, there are a bunch of new tools out there (VisibleMeasures, TubeMogul) which help monetize and analyze online video for publishers, be they consumers or national brands.

And of course, the web is a Web 2.0 (sorry couldn’t resist) playground as everything is and can be, mashed up together. One service (Flypaper) even allows searching and viewing of flickr photos right from inside their application. Sprout brings the power of custom flash applications to a wider audience with their cool builder application which allows users to create cool flash apps right from inside their browser. No download needed.

But my concern as always with these new services is how they will sustain themselves over the long term to support their rapid advancement and integration of really fantastic functionality. I have heard that funding for “Ad-supported” services has tapered off over the past 6 months or so, and if that is the case, what other type of subscription, transaction or other models are out there?

For other views on this check out ZDnet and Rafe’s column.

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The last afternoon sessions are hard as a lot of people have mentally checked out, so it is hard to keep peoples attention. Some guys came out and smashed a server with a sledgehammer (that got people’s attention) as well as one with a dog (yes, a real live dog) that fetched the presenter’s slippers. (?)

A couple of  highlights include Yoics which can connect formerly ‘unconnected’ devices like cameras and your pc to a mobile device.

Not Business as Usual

Forget heavy-weight applications, complicated deployments, and astronomical capEx bills. Software is getting out of the way and letting businesses small and large get things done. Demonstrations by: 

  The Infrastructure for Next-Generation WebToday’s Web delivers applications and services in type and volume well beyond those initially imagined by those who designed the protocols, laid out the infrastructure, and conceived the use cases that would be the modern Web.  These new applications are stressing the capabilities of the Internet, so new technologies are coming to the rescue to retrofit the Web to support next-generation applications.Demonstrations by:

  Search PartyThe search market is moving in two directions:  one leverages human know-how to curate content, the other tunes smart algorithms to identify and categorize content into discernable results.  We explore both as viable means to find the needle of information in the haystack that is the repository of the Internet.Demonstrations by: 

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The Revolution Will Be Broadcast on the WebThe demand for rich video content places big demands on content producers and the networks that distribute their product. It also opens the imaginations of individuals to become creators as well as consumers of video content.Demonstrations by:

 The Social WebIt’s redundant, really.  Since the first pages were linked, people have been the driving force of the Web.   The difference is that today, people – rather than pages – are the center point of every application.  The Web really has become the greatest social experiment ever attempted.Demonstrations by:

  And the Revolution Will Be Paid for by AdvertisingYou thought you’d escape advertising by shifting your viewing from television to the Web.  Think again. And as Web video ads gain momentum, tools to manage and measure video advertising are in demand.Demonstrations by:

  At your ServiceTechnology should just work.  But, of course, it doesn’t.  We’ve become incredibly dependent on technologies that are inherently frail.  Whether an IT profession responsible for maintaining the infrastructure or you or me needing to keep our own computers running, we’ll all be gratified to see new scrutiny paid to the important area of product service and support.Demonstrations by:

 A Different Spin on ServiceService is also what we do for others and this demonstrator is all about helping people find volunteer opportunities in their local communities.Demonstration by:

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Chris Shipley noted that: “Simplicity on the other side of complexity. Making really hard stuff simple.”

A real cool demo was Sprout, that allows you to create flash widgets without being a flash programmer.

Simplify, Simplify

He wasn’t much of a technologist, but Henry David Thoreau had the right idea. We make our lives easier, and arguably better, by using products that wrap complexity and capability in simple designs and interfaces. DEMO will continue to beat the drum for practical products that work well, hide complexity, and make our professional and personal lives more enjoyable.

Demonstrations by:

Content Made Easy

As consumer-generated content become de rigor, we’ll want tools and techniques to create and deliver better looking, more stylish and professional content. Whether it’s presenting materials at work, delivering messages to friends and customers, or distributing content, these products give individuals the ability to communicate like pros.

Demonstrations by:

It’s Easy Being Green

Over decades, the technology industry has had a profound negative impact on the environment. With greater awareness, the industry is also poised to have a profound positive effect as well. We’re watching for products, technologies and services that are responsible to the environment and sustainable in the economy, with an eye toward a future DEMOgreen event.

Demonstrations by:

On Research: Turning Ideas into InnovationsSponsored by The Kauffman FoundationAcademic research centers are fertile ground for discovery of some of the Next Very Big Things. With the support of the Kauffman Foundation, DEMO is again reaching deep into the academic community to identify innovators working on some very big ideas.Panelists:

Steven M. Barlow , PhD., Professor, SPLH
Programs in Neuroscience, Human Biology, and Bioengineering
Director, Communication Neuroscience Laboratories, University of Kansas

Ronald Indeck , PhD., The Das Family Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Washington University, St. Louis

Yannis Papakonstantinou , Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, School of Engineering, University of California, San Diego and Founder, app2you.comThis discussion with the two academics went on a bit too long and I got the sense that audience was tuning out.Virtualization . . .

Virtualization technology is at the center of more secure, more stable, more scalable IT infrastructure. These two products are leading that trend.

Demonstrations by:

…. In a Virtual World

From virtual IT infrastructure to virtual entertainment . . . why indulge someone else’s second life when you can build a second, or third, life of your own?

Demonstration by:

See it again for the first time

You may think you know these products, but we invite you to take a closer look, as each demonstrator unveils a new aspect that brings new dimension and import to these emerging products.

Demonstrations by: