Of the Monday of Macworld Expo workweek , the show trading floor is closed to the populace . No one is let past the Moscone Center entrance hall and onto the exhibit floor itself unless you ’re sporting a snazzy gamey Exhibitor badge . And yet , on this particular Monday , there I was on the Macworld Expo show floor without a blue Exhibitor badge to my name .

How ’d I do it ? Um … let ’s just say “ elfin magic ” and move on . It ’s getting harder and harder for me to pull this off without revealing any tricks of the patronage .

Besides , it ’s not like I have any scoops to report . The Apple John Wilkes Booth is encased infrozen carbonite — or at least , a very declamatory , very impenetrable curtain that even the most industrious reporters would notice well - nigh unimaginable to breach . So if Apple does have wondrous secret to reveal Tuesday morning , the ship’s company did a bang - up job cover them from my prying eyes .

But my sojourn to the showing base did help me form one first mental picture about this year ’s Expo — things are going to be hopping . And I do n’t opine that mental picture was swayed either by the bombilation of activity as developer hurried to fix up their booths or by the fact that — if I ’m reading this floor plan PDF correctly — the integral Expo seems to be crammed into Moscone Center ’s South Hall .

It may only lodge in one manor hall , but it ’s take up thewholefloor — there are no curtains block off vast stretches of genuine estate the way there was back in the thin times of a few year ago . Expo organizers say that more than 300 exhibitor are on hand for this week , and I sure have no reason to doubt their maths — and not just because we work for the same fellowship .

I cite all of this because , in the upheaval surrounding Expo , everything that is n’t an Apple product announcement tends to get drown out . And that ’s a shame since quite a little of Mac developers will be making plenty of intelligence this week outside of Steve Jobs ’ keynote . And one of the reasons behind the existence of this particular blog — besides giving our readers a sense of what ’s happening on the show floor — was to verify news program from other developers did n’t get short shrift .

So it ’s good to see a bustling show floor , take with enthusiastic Mac developers . for certain , Apple is the star at any Macworld Expo , but it ’s certainly not the only act worth paying tending to .