I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I enjoy working with the folks from Microsoft. I am one of three speakers at the Microsoft Architect Council in the Gulf States. My talk is on Interop with Web Services, and I’m having a good time interacting with the audience.
For me, the week started at 4 am on Monday. I flew down to Birmingham, AL, to meet up with the rest of the group, Ian, Tom, and Dan. BTW, Ian is a pretty cool guy and his book “Designing Enterprise Applications with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET” a must read for those developing enterprise applications using .NET. So the first Council was in Birmingham, which went well. The group was interactive with the speakers and everyone seemed to get a lot out of the talks.
Day two was another “start at 4 am” day. Bags packed, we flew to Jacksonville, FL. Yep, my return to good ol’ Jacksonhell. When I started the tour, I left NYC where temperatures where around 20 degrees. Jacksonville felt like the start of summer with the temp at 81 degrees. Strangely I missed the chilly -10 of Killington. Anyway, the council was attended by a much smaller group, around 6 people, but the sessions were good. The group seemed to have similar concerns and the interactions between the group and speakers led to some very interesting conversations.
We got to sleep in on day three, waking up at 6 am. Trust me, that two hours makes a difference. We headed further south to Boca Raton, FL, where it definitely feels like summer time. Of course, all I can think about is the wintery mix weather in Vermont and the start of the US Open in Stratton, which started yesterday. We had a large group joining us for the council and the talks were right on. After three days, I feel I got the story down and I feel comfortable sharing it with others.
The team actually gets to sleep in tomorrow, waking up at 6 am again. We head to Tampa where I had hoped to see Darren and Jeff. But that’s not going to happen because we have to head to Orlando once we are done in Tampa. Most of our nights end around 10 pm, but I’m guessing tomorrow will end around midnight. But hey, what’s 18 hours between friends.
So Orlando will be my last day before returning to New York. I’m really enjoying this tour and the Microsoft guys are great. But I also have to add that I miss Melanie, who is doing her own thing in Paris this week.
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