Friday, September 15, 2006
EiD - Fun! Fun! Fun!
Welcome to Orlando, Florida; America's family entertainment capital.
Where lazy-river pool complexes and maxalopolis theme parks vie for a share of your family dollar with deluxe exec golf clubs and authentic licensed Blues Brothers' shows at The House of Blues (free hat and shades included).
Where the only non-native English speakers are the hotel staff.
I'm writing this at the airport leaving Orlando on my way to a day off (the first in, like, 9 fucking days) in Washington.
The rest of the Cape Town contingent is visiting the Magic Kingdom. I just cannot face more music piped through the ground of a Managed Resort Experience™.
Where lazy-river pool complexes and maxalopolis theme parks vie for a share of your family dollar with deluxe exec golf clubs and authentic licensed Blues Brothers' shows at The House of Blues (free hat and shades included).
Where the only non-native English speakers are the hotel staff.
I'm writing this at the airport leaving Orlando on my way to a day off (the first in, like, 9 fucking days) in Washington.
The rest of the Cape Town contingent is visiting the Magic Kingdom. I just cannot face more music piped through the ground of a Managed Resort Experience™.
Endless Entertainment
Actually it wasn't that bad. I floated down the lazy river on a pink inflatable tube and played golf at on of them fancy electrop-cart courses (on the corporate account, of course). But I draw the line at Mickey fucking Mouse[1].
Catalyst itself was a big success for our team. We had a prominent stand, a well-received product and a one of the most talked about demos presented by the company #3.
Obviously my part in this is limited to implementing the design determined by the bigger cheeses, but we've all picked up a lot of momentum from the last few days and I feel like I've made some strong connections in the process.
One of the things that is fascinating about these types of conferences (read, sales pitches) is that you can very quickly tell the difference between the big players within the company and the also-rans.
I smugly count two big players among my new firm-handshake-keep-it-up connections and have eliminated at least two from my have-any-real-influence list.
Catalytic
Three Big Guns, one Also-ran and two Tech Support
(Code Monkey not pictured)
Cue AC/DC, 'Well it's a dog-eat-dog! Eat cat too! French eat frog, and I eat you!'
hahahahaha - I've probably burnt a lot of karma over the last few days.
dichotomy.
I can't believe how tired I am.
[1] Who doesn't feature all that strongly in Disney's branding anymore. It seems that he too has done what all Americans eventually do and retired (to Arizona of course).
// posted by werner @ 2:15:00 am 
