The only planes that ever arrive early are "red eyes", which of course are the only flights you don't want to arrive early. I came to Frankfurt via Dublin, on Air Lingus, for no good reason at all. That's a red eye that arrives early and only gets you ¾ of the way there. In perhaps the dumbest architecture decision making process ever, Air Lingus decided that if there were to be a full row of empty seats that someone such as myself could dive into in order to lay down and pass out upon, they would make the experience painful (literally) by making sure the arm rests only extend 45 degrees – thus making the row defensible in case of a marauding force attack, but almost impossible to sleep upon without serious risk of organ injury.
To make matters worse, it was approximately 30 below zero (Celsius or Fahrenheit) both outside and inside the airport.
Germany is the same as usual. It is rainy, cloudy, and cold. The schnitzel is good, if you like crushed meat deep fried. I do. The apple wine/cider is odd but you get used to it. The red wine, as in China, stinks.
SNW had good attendance. The show is normally good anyway in my opinion, as it's a much lower pressure version of the U.S. shows. I also enjoy smart Germans speaking in English. That would make me nuts.
The rock star of the show? Moshe Yanai. Brian Garrett told me it was standing room only, with lines out the door. The XIV founder and Symmetrix inventor had a huge following of folks listening to him, which is sort of hard to do as he has a brutal Israeli accent to begin with, and combined with his super-size engineering brain makes him almost indiscernible at times. Apparently the Germans got it though, as Brian said if Moshe wanted to stand there all day people would have stayed and worshipped him.
Best show booth utilization award goes to Pillar. They had more of their own people per square meter than all others combined. Unfortunately, that left no room for non-employees, but that's why there are hallways.
Best line of the week came from journalist Torben Sorensen – and the O is supposed to have a line through it. Torben is a Dane, and I've always been fascinated with O's with lines though them ever since Monty Python did the "moose" graphics in the beginning of the Holy Grail. It seems the Dane's have 3 extra vowels than no one else has – and the O with the line is one of them. When I asked why they felt they needed extra vowels he said "because Danish is a mumbled language" meaning that Dane's mumble, so consonants get lumped together and sound the same, thus they needed extra vowels to make things that sound like words instead of grunts. Genius.
He also explained that "may I have a beer" in Danish is "ol" (also with the line), and that is why you can find absolutely polluted drunk Dane's laying on their back somewhere still able to order their next beer. I need to spend more time in that country.
By far the best personal moment came when a couple arrived to speak to me regarding, well, I'm still not sure. They were right out of central casting, so much so I really thought they may have been professional actors hired by the show to screw with people like me, but that would require a sense of humor and Germans are not exactly known for such wit normally. She was roughly 5'5" tall and just as wide. She clearly was drunk when applying pink lipstick over 70% of her face. She had a beehive hairdo that looked strikingly similar to Cosmo's mother on Fairly Odd Parents, for those of you with little ones. Her teeth were the color of Coke Light. She giggled repeatedly, and never actually said anything germane to any of the painful conversations occurring, except that she was from South Africa. What she was doing in Germany, I do not know. Her boyfriend/husband/other was a small, thin man, with an outstanding comb over hairdo and perhaps the longest nose hair I've ever witnessed. Noelle suggested he could have easily used gel and styled it. I thought I could see it move towards me, like an alien. Upon exiting – after a solid 10 minutes, she almost took down the booth.
Those were the only truly bizarre people at the show, which as most of you know, ain't bad. There was the guy with the Bee Gee's hair and beard with the electric blue tee-shirt and matching overalls, but I didn't get to speak with him. Otherwise, people were utterly normal.
I did host a panel with some interesting folks – a Brit from the Cornwall (UK) police department, a guy from O2 – the German mobile phone company, the IT director of a large automotive research company, and the European IT head for a company who provides chicken parts and hamburger to McDonalds. It was quite an eclectic crowd. It was obvious to me that the guy selling Russian hamburger to McDonalds is happy in a global recession – if you have no money, you eat at McDonalds. I was surprised however that the other folks we not slowing spending – in fact most were talking about accelerating spending in IT – and basically suggested that as long as you aren't a complete idiot and you have your ROI story together, they are able to get funding for projects as easily – if not more easily – now than ever. The public service (police) representative realized that since revenues are tax based that this could be a one year thing, so he intends to solve as many problems as he can right now, so they are in a position to deal with their own economic trickledown effect next year.
Overall, the mood was far better than I would have expected, which makes me happy. The vendors I spoke with at the show were genuinely positive overall, and some outright bullish. Misplaced optimism perhaps, but it definitely is not as bad as we tend to make it seem.
The overall consensus for Europe regarding the U.S. political situation is A: it can only get better, no matter who wins, and B: it's probably best if Obama wins because at least American's will be able to get off a plane in a foreign land without being hated upon arrival, if for no other reason than it will give international folks a reason to now engage with an American prior to hating him/her, which is nice. It is funny how the whole world has decided that Bush and the republicans are responsible for everything bad – like the financial mess, simply by "associative hatred". They don't care that democrat (Massachusetts own Barney Frank) led the charge that caused the subprime meltdown. It's sort of like O.J. Simpson spending life in jail for stealing his own football trophies and not for chopping his wife's head off. I guess nature has a way of leveling things off eventually.
Dankeshein.
I am not German myself (dutch) but I am pretty sure it's "Danke schön" :-)
Keep up the good work (blog)
Martin
-----Hey, not according to Wayne Newton it isn't - plus, I can't figure out how to make the line over the "O" - nor the line through the "O" as is referenced in the last blog entry. Cheers.
Posted by: Martin Jansen | October 30, 2008 at 07:25 AM
Steve, just got back from the show as you did. And yes I do agree on the rockstar of the show. I had to stand too to hear Moshes words....but should I now buy this system? Don't know.
As a Pillar customer I was blocking potentials as well as the staff at their booth ;-).
But the award goes to your booth...and we both know why!
I hope the supply chain works better than the duration of the project of this McDonald supplier. In total 12 month to implement this "rather small/easy" replication setup.
BTW, too bad you didn't have a part on your own on stage...
And what have I learnt @ SNW? FCoE is far, far away..marketing much better than reality.
So, Dankeschön to you, too.
Posted by: Andreas Christen | October 31, 2008 at 08:43 AM