That Special Time of Year

Aahhhh, it's that special time of year again: the weather's getting colder, the lights are on even during the day, and there is that festive atmosphere all around. People wearing a gentle smile on their face and a twinkle in their eyes, eagerly awaiting the celebration of the year, their cheeks glowing with joyful anticipation.

Yes, Macworld Expo San Francisco is drawing near!

Are you going, too? Great! Here are three online resources that you may find helpful in deciding what to see and which events to attend to make the most of your visit to San Francisco's Moscone Center in some four weeks' time.

myMacworldexpo -- If you have registered for Macworld Expo already, you will have heard of this new service offered by the show's organizer, IDG World Expo: once you've signed into myMacworldexpo with your credentials (which you should have received via email), you can plan your visits to exhibitors and maintain your conference class schedule online.

As a handy starting point, the site can recommend both exhibitors and classes based on the interests that you entered while ordering the expo ticket. The site even lets you find other attendees via keywords, their areas of expertise, and geographical location; use those search results to compile a list of "people to meet;" and arrange meetings with them online. (If you're worried about your privacy, you can edit your profile on the site.)

While, overall, myMacworldexpo is a great idea, its implementation is still a bit flaky: it doesn't "know" which conference package you've bought, so it will show all available conference sessions, not just the ones you're actually entitled to attend; iCal wouldn't import the iCalendar file with my class schedule that I downloaded from the site; and, to be frank, the site's navigation is a bit klunky and its design not really pretty, either (to put it mildly).

Its most important drawback, however, is that it only lists the official Macworld Expo events, so you'll have to look elsewhere for all the events happening in MWSF's halo.

Macworld Expo on Yahoo! Upcoming -- Upcoming features a few such un-official choice events that are an essential ingredient of any worthwhile Expo trip. To give you two examples, the list currently includes DailyTechTalk's Pre-Keynote Group meetup at 4:00am on Tuesday at the Apple Store on Stockton street, and the BarCamp-style MacCamp that kicks off right after Expo closes on Friday.

While I find the look-and-feel of Upcoming quite a bit more enjoyable than myMacworldexpo, its way of presenting individual events literally more inviting, and the selection of events very promising, the overall list of Macworld-related events still is a bit short. But resource number three can definitely help us with that.

Hess Memorial Macworld Expo SF 2008 Events List -- Traditionally, the Hess Memorial Events List hosted by Ilene's Machine is the authoritative source for all the event goodness that's happening beyond the scope of Moscone Center. One of its specialties is listing events not open to the general public -- like press conferences or invitation-only company presentations -- and stating for each respective event who is welcome or what it takes to get in. Due to the site's sheer completeness and simplicity, I'd suggest you start with the Hess Memorial Events List for your "extra-Macworld-Expositional" event planning.

If you find something that looks interesting, indicate your intent to attend (sorry...) via Upcoming, and finalize everything by compiling your conference class schedule on myMacworldexpo. Oh, and while you're at it...

O'Reilly at Macworld Expo -- O'Reilly Media will also bring a delicious smorgasbord of booth presentations, panel discussions, and special book offers to Macworld Expo, so be sure to stop by and see what we've got in store for you. Who knows, you might even run into one of us bloggers there, too!

Whatever plans you will eventually come up with, don't forget to leave some room in your schedule for experiencing the beautiful city of San Francisco (and it's awesome restaurant scene, I might add), too. See you there in a month!

P.S.: If you know of any further useful and noteworthy MWSF planning resources on the 'Net, please share them with us in the comments. Thanks!