Microsoft Global Briefing

Have a look at this Microsoft Site.. There is a cute foto there of the backstage area. There is a lot in the photo if you look carefully. Nothing I suspect is Microsoft Confidential, but anyway.

Note that I am not a Microsoft person, and did not visit MGB in Atlanta, and I have never been to one. But I have been to one for another similarly sized high-tech company a few years back. Being under NDA, and being before the tech-crash, I was not game to take any photos back stage, and only took very limited photos of the stage, and not when many people were there. I saw and heard some things that I was not meant to see and hear, but that is what NDA’s are for.

1. On the scaffolding on the top right are high-performance video projectors, two of them. They are paralelled to get the light output, and are back projected. Just behind those two in the photo there are another couple. This is so that they can have two images of the same thing on each side of the stage.

2. On the left of the photo on the tables there are another three sets of paralelled video projectors. Same reason as above. These are likely at stage level and are to provide backdrops behind presenters.

3. Not shown, but it is likely that Picture in Picture is being used for some of the video projectors. Here they project a black square with the main big projector, and then project a higher res smaller image into the black area.

4. Video production is fairly easy to see. That is where all the monitors are. There will also be an audio console nearby.

5. I would guess that the production budget would be somewhere arroung US$5-10m.

6. The area is a 25-30,000 capacity arena – one of the dome style ones. Then they have curtained off about 10,000 of the seats, and put the production back behind that.