First Day and First Course

Our quartet of students arrived bright and early this morning to pick up our registration and merchandise. We then split up, two of us went off to mingle and get a feel of the layout, and two of us went to the Intro to Siggraph course.
This was a very interesting course for a Siggraph newbies like ourselves. The two instructors on hand laid out a system for planning the week, how to layout what our priorities are and how to navigate the exhibit floor. They overviewed the different sections of the conference, and gave some suggestions on things not to miss, like the pre show at the electronic theater.
They then started discussing some of the current areas of focus that the conference would be hitting on. Subjects like Scientific Visualization and GPU Shader Programming, as well as more general animation, modeling and rendering. It was an entertaining course, hopefully the rest of the instructors here are as entertaining as these first two!
As one of them said, “Siggraph is an exercise in over-stimlation”. I believe him.