NVISION 08 - A Town Turned Green

http://www.gameaxis.com/home/?blog=2465
by kichigai on Monday, 25th August 2008 @ 12:17:57 P

NVIDIA's first big computing/gaming event is about to kick off tomorrow in the capital of Silicon Valley (that's San Jose, California btw). With preparations all under way, downtown San Jose has been turned into a green city. With the blessing of Mayor Chuck Reed proclaiming this "Visual Computing Week", NVIDIA is really pulling all the stops to make this successful. NVISION is a 3-day visual computing conference that's expected to draw a crowd of around 10,000 participants from around the world.

Yeah, yeah, so you're probably thinking NVIDIA = graphics cards, and NVISION's going to be this big boring tech conference like Computex, so why is GameAxis here? Well, a couple of very good reasons.

One, this will be the first time the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) finals will be held in the US, instead of Paris, France. The ESWC is the 'other' big international gaming tournament other than the World Cyber Games (WCG).

Second, there will be a Guinness World Record attempt at the largest/longest consecutive LAN party by playing for 36 hours straight.

Third, there will be a special Video Games Live (VGL)concert performance for NVISION. If you consider yourself a gamer and you don't know what VGL is, please leave your gamer card at the counter, do not collect $200, do not pass Go, and close your browser right now.

Fourth, the guys from MythBusters is supposed to make an appearance with a 'Special' surprise for the closing ceremony. Hell, I just wanna see what it is.

And Lastly, NVIDIA has a very interesting list of 'famous' people who will appear at the event. This list comprises of a strange array of people with geek cred, gaming cred and well...just cred. Tricia Helfer (Number 'Six') of Battlestar Galactica will be there to add the celebrity babe factor, Jeff Han, the multi-touch screen technology guru for the real geeks, and Lorne Lanning, the creator of the Oddworld series are some of this mixed bunch.

Anyway, after a very smooth flight to San Francisco (my flight was early, there was No one in the airport, I passed US customs in 5 minutes, and the drive down to San Jose was in clear traffic throughout), I decided to go walk around to find my bearings. As expected, everyone was still busy setting up, but surprisingly no one stopped this lone journalist poking his camera everywhere. There's nothing really to show though, I mean, what's there to see in an empty room with just tables and chairs for the BOYC LAN centre, or the cardboard, paper and tape strewn floors of the exhibition area.

Well, tomorrow is the big event, and whether it will just turn out into a three day fun party, or the biggest visual computing event of the century, well, that's what I'm here to find out. Stay tuned for more NVISION highlights on www.gameaxis.com.