This time last year, I was at the Macworld Conference & Expo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Most people seemed a little confused as to why I would fly all the way down to California for two days for technology conference. For so long, I was stuck on the other side of the world when Apple held its biggest event of the year. In 2008, I was only a few hours away. Little did I know it was to be the second last ever Macworld, and the last at which Steve Jobs would present his keynote.

At 3 AM on Tuesday January 15 2008, I joined fifty other mac geeks at the Pre-keynote meet-up outside the Apple Store on Stockton Steet (I’m the one in the long brown coat and cream pants in the middle), and we walked together to join the line at the Moscone Center, where there were already around fifty people waiting. Despite the early hour and the bitter cold, the atmosphere was electric with anticipation. We spent the next six hours in conversation over breakfast donuts and coffee, reminiscing over past Apple flops and successes, and speculating on what Steve would unveil during the big event.

Photo by Adam Jackson.

Finally, they unlocked the door, and we streamed into the hall to see Steve Jobs striding on stage in front of an audience filled with MacBooks and iPhones. He talked about the four billion iTunes song downloads, the new apple TV, and unveiled the MacBook Air. To conclude the event, Randy Newman – the composer for Pixar – sang a few songs, including Toy Story’s “You’ve got a friend in me”, saying “I always root against corporations, ’cause that’s how I am, but not this one”.

Photo by Tech Show Network.

This was just the beginning. I spent the next two days visiting all the booths, from Adobe to Microsoft to BusySync to Gelaskins, attending presentations on hardware and software, and even purchasing my very own iPhone – receiving a complementary case from one of the vendors. It was exhilarating to be surrounded by so many members of the Mac community in such a dynamic venue.

Photo by smenzel

By the end of the second day I was completely exhausted, trying to fit a lifetime’s worth of Macworld experiences into 48 hours. There were 191 educational sessions, 479 exhibitors, and 47,908 attendees. Luckily, one of the exhibitors was MetroNaps – a company that provides an essential service and which permitted me to trial one of their pods for much need rejuvenation.

Photo by laughingsquid.