After seeing the way attendees gawked at the “welcoming ball” in front of the expo hall at Interop Las Vegas 2007, I’ve decided that part being a tech geek means that you are drawn to cool technology tricks, no matter how simple or basic they are.

The Interop welcoming ball used a simple project system inside an illuminated blue sphere to run the message “Welcome to INTEROP. It’s your Industry. It’s your show.” Then, the ball alternated between displaying the names of all of the attendees and vendors and projecting a list of the popular IT topics being discussed at the show.

It captured the attention of a lot more attendees than I expected, as people stopped to watch the whole display run, stared as they strolled by, stopped to touch the sphere and examine the thing, or take photos and video (like me). Of course, I had a very good reason to stop and take a video. I wanted to show a clip to TechRepublic users so that they could see what the fuss was about.