I’m “vacationing” from Infendo this week due to the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in foggy, cold and generally miserable San Francisco, but a keynote from this morning drove me back into the Infendo fold, if only briefly.
While talking about data centers and virtualization and all manner of skull numbing technology fare today, Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels gave a shout out of sorts to Nintendo’s phenom, the Wii.
“You think about buying servers today, and I think it’s a lot like trying to find a Wii,” Vogels said.
He was flanked by two huge video monitors, which displayed some Wii boxes on a retail shelf next to another image of some dude being swamped by servers and cabling in an unnamed data center. The dude looked like he could have used some fun in his life. The dude looked like he could use a Wii.
The Wii reference was cool enough on its own, but the real-world, mainstream reference and the fact that it was during the day one keynote was even cooler. But the coolest thing (it’s awfully cool in the Moscone Center today, can you tell?) was that Vogels, an extremely bright guy with a thick German accent (Austrian?), wove the reference into his keynote effortlessly. That’s what got me. This system IS popular culture now. It’s like saying you need a Kleenex when you ask for a tissue.
It’s like saying “hey, we’re going to go play some Nintendo,” and having everyone know you’re talking about video games.
See y’all in a few days.