Notes from Europe

SNW Europe is an excellent show. I didn't attend Storage Expo in London this year, but heard that was also superbly done. In Frankfurt, which I no longer consider the "Springfield" of Europe, the show was very well done. I was in and out in less than 48 hours, but during my stint I made some observations – in no specific order.

Europeans dress much better than Americans. Ties were the norm, not the exception. The good news is I'm back on a tie kick.

Frankfurt has done a nice job turning itself into an interesting city instead of a cold, grey boring town that made me wish I were in Albany. Tony Prigmore and I ate two outstanding German meals. Granted, we are fans of deep-fried anything, but we found two different out of the way German restaurants, complete with indoor picnic tables and a bar built in 1687 and ate enormously satisfying meals of mashed up, deep fried meat and potato's. I especially enjoyed the fact that while Tony and I were the first and only patrons at the second restaurant (we needed to be there early as we had an event to attend) and not a sole spoke English, our foreign status quickly became a non-issue as 28 Japanese folks came streaming in. You don't see that very often in Frankfurt, I suspect. We did have to walk back in a bit of rain, and had little idea where we were, but that was OK as we stumbled through the Frankfurt Sex district – which is always good fun from a translation perspective.

I was astounded at how many members of the media were present. I spoke at an HP launch the day prior to the show beginning and there were at least 40 international media members present. I don't think there are 40 media members in North America, let alone those who cover IT and Storage stuff. I was later told the show had about 100 media folks registered.

I met a lot of really interesting users. Europe is far ahead of us at things we think we invented as Americans, such as privacy laws and "Green" IT. As opposed to hype and jargon, I went hunting for those who lived in that world, and boy did I find them. I hosted a panel of users to talk about the Green thing. Opinions were loud and varied, which made for decent entertainment, but agreement was had on one key point – Green is money. The environmental impact of IT is nice to talk about, but no one is taking any real action based on that alone – there has to be a money play. That makes sense, but it was nice to hear from real people.

Arguably the most entertaining, articulate, and intelligent IT professional I've ever had the pleasure to spend time with is Steve O'Donnell from British Telecom. A big, bald, Scott (and yes, I did say articulate) with an even bigger opinion, Steve lives in a land most of us only read about. He has 7,000 data centers around the planet to deal with, lives and dies with every regulation, and is always looking for ways to take technology advancements and turn them into operational efficiency improvements. He said that globally, IT has the same or larger impact in terms of carbon offsets as the Airline industry. Wow. I don't know if he made that up but he sure sounded credible. He was also aggressive in his position to his peers – telling them to stop sniveling and get on with it, if you will. Apparently he is pushed by BT to spread the word, so he speaks frequently. If you get a chance he is worth hearing.

Overall, the content was great and people seemed to like it. I didn't see much vendor fluffy garbage presentations on the agenda – if it were a vendor oriented thing it was done as a case study and presented by a user, which made it more valuable and real.

Because the show ran into Halloween, we were forced to get up at 4AM to catch a 7AM connection to Milan in order to get back to Boston in time for our kids to ravage the neighborhood for candy. No one should get up at 4AM. Of course that is the only time there is no traffic, no line at security, and nothing open in the airport so time moves slower than traffic on the 101 at rush hour. The good news is that most German magazines have lots of semi-naked women them. I think I was reading Die German Paint magazine, which was loaded with visually appealing advertising. The Milan airport is classic Italy – you can buy an espresso from a super-model then head next door and spend half a years' salary on a pair of shoes. I love that.