TEA SATE 2024
I’ve long wanted to go to the Themed Entertainment Association’s SATE (Storytelling, Architecture, Technology, and Experience) conference, but, before I had early retired from full-time teaching, I just couldn’t work it out. So, when I saw that this year it was being hosted at always-fun Dollywood, where I hadn’t been in probably a decade, I decided to go! While it was my first SATE, it won’t be my last. I made a lot of connections, the conference was informational and inspiring, and very well organized and run.
I applied for a talk, entitled “Show Control for All” and got accepted. I was a bit nervous, since it’s a technical topic, and there’s a lot of non-technical designers and similar people in the audience.
Thanks Devin Flannery for the photo!
But I think the talk went well, and I was very honored to get a lot of kind words afterwards. My talk was the second in the entire conference, which was great because I could relax and watch the rest of the great presentations!
The talks are almost all 20 minutes long, which really keeps things moving along, and ranged from site planning to experience design, and from presentation and interaction techniques to storytelling tools. It was all really great and inspiring. Here’s a few (not at all comprehensive) camera phone photos, click any to enlarge.
And then, after the conference, we were on the Dollywood grounds!
Sadly, on the last night, I wasn’t feeling well (turns out I was at the beginning of a nasty cold). Since I drove down from NYC so I could check up my sister in Asheville after the flooding (photos here), I had brought along my big camera and big lens. So the last night I went up in the hills and got a photo with the good camera of the C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) comet!