3D Basecamp: Complaining about Bandwidth at The Googleplex

GOOGLE SKETCHUP 3D BASECAMP, MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA--I'm now in a session on "geomodeling"--placing SketchUp models into Google Earth. It's quite a detailed, hands-on session, not the kind of stuff suitable for a blog post.

Both this presenter and the previous one made disparaging comments about the speed of bandwidth in the conference room. To watch what they are doing on the big screeen, it doesn't seem so bad. Either these people are used to a firehose blast of bandwidth, or perhaps Google constrains bandwidth in their conference room. It seems funny that people inside Google would complain about bandwidth.

Now everyone is complaining about bandwidth because the instructor suggested having everybody get on Google Earth (the room is equipped with computers at each seat). Having everyone follow along won't work, so the instructor is going back to Plan A, just presenting on the big screen. (She didn't plan for having attendees follow along with computers, which turns out to be a good thing.)

  --RSN