The NAIAS Atmosphere

• Regarding technology, there seemed to be more refinement rather than innovation. Refinement is needed, of course, but I was hoping to see more new techs. Not a lot of surprises, but a lot of good improvements on existing ideas.
   
• Walking through the crowds, I saw there were two types of people at NAIAS. Type 1 were the people who stared at the cars and discussed various features. Type 2 were the ones who spent most of the time hunched over, staring at their digital camera readouts. I'm proud to say I'm a type 2. (And I will be until I figure out how to take a perfect picture. As I'm sure you noticed from this site, I'm a writer, not a photographer.)
   
• The diversity was great. I was surrounded by people speaking languages you rarely hear. Swedish, Japanese, German and others, it was a good feeing to be near so many experts of the industry.
   
• Let's take a moment to acknowledge Albert Cobo.

You've got to have been pretty cool to have a major Detroit building named after you. No matter what I accomplish in life, I doubt I'll ever get to the point where I'll have national car shows hosted in a building dedicated to my name.

..Not to mention I don't think my head would look that good if carved in stone.

• As a computer geek, I'm very interested in the technology behind the show. With all the gigantic 100-foot long LCD screens, pumping sound systems and interactive demos, what's really running everything? While walking around, I couldn't resist taking this shot of a large presentation monitor as the controlling computer rebooted:

Windows 98 running behind the scenes at a national auto show in 2005? Amazing.