Convention Setup Day 1

Today was our first setup day at the Innovation Center booth in the Orange County Convention center.



The booth itself is already constructed, but we needed to install kiosks, registers, and a bunch of other restaurant IT. You can see that the convention hall doesn't look at all ready for a Monday opening. It's amazing how it all comes together in just a couple of days.




We managed to get most of our stuff installed and set up today, despite the fact that some last minute changes forced us to uninstall and reinstall the kiosks. Tomorrow we'll finish up and do some testing. We have to be ready for VIP tours on Sunday.

After we wrapped up for the day, we went over to 'the crate'. The crate is a long standing tradition at the Worldwide Convention. It is sponsored by a different department each convention, and part of the tradition is finding out where 'the crate' is this year. From the outside, 'the crate looks very much like many of the other huge wooden crates that get shipped to the convention floor.


But when it gets opened up at around 5pm each day of convention setup, inside you'll find party lights, a CD player, chips & pretzels, a refrigerator fully stocked with beer, and a frozen margarita machine.



The convention center is not air conditioned during the setup days, so this provides a nice way to relax and cool off at the end of the day. It also give you a chance to meet up with some of the people you know from other departments, some that you may not have seen since the last convention.