IBC looms large and a friend drops by

I had an unexpected visitor today, though I won't go into who or why he's here just yet. We've got to keep some of the mystery of this place.

Instead the large part of the day has been devoted to the logistics surrounding IBC. Having the luxury of a dual perspective on IBC as an attendee and as a member of the Conference Committee I can complain to myself if there is anything I don't like. But this year I can't even complain about the hotel as I've been very kindly put up in the NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky by Deluxe.

IBC looks like it will be the usual mixture of trade show and meetings, followed by the conference and EDCF. There is quite the contingent coming over from Deluxe, both UK and US, so expect to see several familiar faces. As always I never have time to see everyone and everything that I would like, which is particularly bad when I'm wearing a new hat and handing out new business cards. Hopefully they will have arrived by then. BlackBerry is said to be driven down from Denham to London today. As for my MacBook, I had to wait so long that I ended up canceling my order. According to an article In Guardian's Technology blog there is a strong lilelihood that a new MacBook featuring the Merom (64-bit Core 2 Duo) chips will appear 12 September, so I'm just as happy to wait until after IBC to get my hands on it.

Other than that I can recommend Leon, an award winning fast food place at the top of London's Carnaby street, where I had lunch today. My friend, who travels too much and admits that hence he doesn't always eat as well as he should, rated it highly. It certainly beats anything they serve at the RAI. Memo to self: complain to myself about Dutch catering ahead of next Conference Committee and work it into Digital Cinema Theme Day. To paraphrase Napoleon, even a digital cinema army marches on it stomach.