Google Dance and a strange piece of Google schwag

As I noted in an earlier post, I dropped by the Google Dance tonight having never been to one before. Google certainly did their best to keep people entertained - they had a dunking booth, photo op booths, product demos, robot wars, ice cream, make-your-own-music video, and… well… dancing.

Here are some pictures:

The green screen on the left allowed people to have their heads appear superimposed over the bodies of dancers so that you could make your own music video.

Product demos were offered. Unfortunately, there was no one there from the Google Toolbar team. I would’ve liked to have met my counterpart - that would’ve been interesting.

There were lots of people dancing.

I’ve come to realize that I’ll never be a fan of It’s It’s - no matter what branding. They’re simply too hard and too thick for my tastes (no pun intended). On the same topic, I’ve been to Google a number of times now for lunch, and I’m pretty sure that most attendees would agree with me when I note that the free food served at this event was not on par with the regular stuff.

(As an aside, have that many people really never seen yellow watermelons before?)
All in all, I had a good time. It was great to be able to spend some time with some of my friends from Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo.

On a related note, the schwag that Google was giving out at SES was a bit peculiar:

Aren’t these “signal strength” increasing stickers known to do nothing other than sucker you into spending money on something that doesn’t do anything and make you feel better because you tried to do something?

Finally, SES was definitely fun. In some ways, I miss attending WWDC (especially Stump The Experts), but this was a good change of scenery. It was also a great opportunity for me to learn about the progress of adCenter!

Update: Wow it looks like I scooped Google’s own blog on the ice cream bit.