Hello, from Alliston Ontario!
It’s the morning of day two of Tech Trek. I arrived here on Sunday afternoon, and yesterday was the first full day of proceedings. Most of it was in the main ballroom, listening to presentations. Jon and I hosted a session of the solution architects in the late afternoon, but then it was time for the 1st Annual Duffer’s Open.
This year, Tech Trek is at a different place. Since I started with Esri Canada, it has been at the Kempenfelt Centre in Barrie. However, the company has grown and we have outgrown that place. I was talking to Harold, and he said that if we had stayed at the Kempenfelt this year, 50 people would have had to have been put up in hotels in Barrie instead of staying at the conference centre.
While the Kempenfelt Centre has a golf course next door and playing a round of golf was always listed as an option when there was a free block in the schedule, the Nottawasaga Resort where we are at this year has 45 holes of golf on it and Esri arranged a proper best-ball tournament.
That happened last night. I don’t have time to recap all of the happenings. Sometimes I made shots that were good, and sometimes I made shots that were bad. 😉 But the highlights were:
- Hitting the ball into the hole from about 90 yards away. (That was my second shot of the day. Drop the mike, leave the stage. :-))
- I was second place on the longest drive hole.
- I saw a huge beaver and a snapping turtle.
Do you get extra points for spotting wildlife??
Hi Mom. Yes, but that’s only if you’re looking for creative ways to cheat. 🙂
Also, there was a tornado only a little ways from here in all the thunderstorms that passed through yesterday. Didn’t hear or see anything, but heard about it later.
My thoughts on Tech Trek 2014.
The weekend after Tech Trek is now coming to a close. Real work starts again tomorrow and so I thought I would put a few words down that put some shape to the week that was.
Before I went, Tammy asked me if I was excited to be going. I had to think about it before answering. I’m sure from her point of view, I was going away from responsibilities, where I would be fed three meals a day, I wouldn’t have to clean up cat barf and I would be interacting with almost two hundred of my co-workers. From my point of view, I had to take a four hour flight away from my family on Father’s Day, to a place where I would have to present or teach on every day except for Tuesday. I suppose it really does depend on how you look at it.
I did have fun at times. There was the aforementioned golf tournament, which was great. The next night I got to play ball hockey, which left me sore for the rest of the week. I had a lot of good conversations with people who I don’t get to regularly see. My presentations and teaching went reasonably well. Thursday’s first day of teaching Enterprise Architect went particularly well. The Friday was a little tougher, as the whole class’ energy was low and everyone was looking forward to going home. The last two days, there were only about 40 people remaining, as the rest had returned home on Wednesday afternoon. It was an interesting experience, with the evenings and meals being much quieter. Not quite the same as Harry being left at Hogwarts for the Christmas holidays, but there was some of that. 🙂
The location of Tech Trek was new this year. Every other year, it was held at Kempenfelt, on Lake Simcoe. This year it was at Nottawasaga, and it was less "camping" and more "conference". There was no bonfire at the lake edge, and the big social night was a live band playing in the ballroom, not a much of nerds singing karaoke. The food was good, on par with Kempenfelt. The rooms were much nicer, and I didn’t have to have a roommate. It’s nice to have a room to yourself, even if you do like your roommates generally. The interior decoration at the place was somewhat run down and garish, and the hallways on the semi-basement "conference level" were twisting and turning, much like the Overlook Hotel in the Shining. Look at this photo, and tell me you don’t expect to see twin girls asking you to play with them for ever, and ever…
https://biickert.ca/ii/album/ov…
The travel was uneventful, and it was nice that Tammy and the kids both saw me off and picked me up from the airport.
I won’t even get into the sessions with the Solution Architect from Esri (US). I felt a bit out of my depth. There also was the suggestion that perhaps someone in my position should be more of a sales adjunct (ensuring that the sale of the solution fits the customer) rather than a billable resource. Normally I wouldn’t put too much stake in that, but most of the Esri Canada brass was in the room listening at the time.
I got to meet Solution Architects from Esri in both Australia and New Zealand. They had been invited by Esri Canada to attend Tech Trek, and they attended my Enterprise Architect training on the two bonus days. Trevor and Vincent were both good to talk to and I think I’ll be speaking to them again in the future.
Overall, it was a very good experience, but it was a helluva lot of work and a very long week. Maybe I would have been quicker to answer Tammy if it was like the old days, when I would just show up at Tech Trek and my only goal was to survive the hours upon hours of Powerpoint slides. I guess that’s just growing up. 🙂