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Great opening session with a strong emphasis on the Lotus Notes/Domino product having a long and strong future and that IBm is committed to the technology and that it’s an integral part of the overarching SOA strategy.

Man, I’m so glad to be outa’ here! Las Vegas is just too much and I’m so looking forward to a couple of days with friends in a more “normal” city. The hotel had been quite quiet all week, at least up on our 23rd floor location. But, last night some party neighbors checked in next door. Their room seemed to be party central with loud music, people hollering in the hall and doors slamming most of the evening. This is Vegas, why don’t they go somewhere (else!). My flight is at 7am and the departure schedule says I should catch the 4am or 4:30am bus to the airport. These people were in and out of the party room all night and when I left two of them were carrying on a conversation in the hallway and I had to step over them. In the casino, one guy is yelling and screeming at somebody on his cell phone, security is trying to politly evict a young lady who’s had to much to drink, and of course the gambling has barely slowed down at all an this is 4am! The party at the Jet night club is still going strong with a dozen security guys out front and the young and the beautiful rocking it out. The bass beat is strong and I realize that’s what I was hearing in my room 23 floors away.

The conference organizers at the bus are great. The greet me with a cheery hello, take my bag and put it on the bus and point me back to the coffee and breakfast table curbside and tell me the bus will roll on out to the airport when I’ve got my coffee, how very nice and civilized especially at this hour.

This is the check-in line for my US Airways flight to Phoenix connecting on to Orlando. What you can’t quite see is there is more line behind the pillar and almost out the door. And this line isn’t all that bad! You should see the one at Delta! Some 14,000 IBMers are making their way home this morning and causing a little bit of a backlog in with all the normal Vegas traffic. After a tip from a guy passing by and checking with the onsite conference helpers I determine that I can use the SkyCap check-in which has a line of only 5 people. In under 5 minutes I’ve got my boarding pass and through a very short line at security. Last year, because I was flying international back to Canada, I had to wait in that line for over two hours, only to be pulled out at the last minute to catch the flight. Now I’m sipping another coffee at the Burger King and enjoying the free wireless courtesy of the airport. All other airports should follow McCarren’s lead and make the access free as a service to travelers.

Well, there is a 4 hour layover in Phoenix, and I’ve never been in their airport, so we’ll see what that’s like. I’m so glad to be getting out this town. 

Last session of the week and I’m tired. So many people, so many packed days. All in all the conference has been great and I’ve learned a little bit more about several new areas. These new insights will be useful for the year ahead. Insights into products, strategies and directions for the company. I’ll be on my own tonight as my roomie has gone home, so I’m thinking about a quiet evening. Tomorrow will be the exodus to the airport with 10,000+ others to travel over to Orlando for Lotusphere. I’m beginning to wonder about the wisdom of two back to back conferences. It seemed to make sense when I arranged for all this. The nice break will be to see Paul & Rachael, old friends who are now located just a two hour drive from Orlando. So, after a weekend off, it’s back into conference mode – too much good food, lots of sitting and thinking. The other good thing is it will be even warmer. Here in Las Vegas a long sleeve shirt have been good for most outside activities and in Orlando it should be in the 70s. Going back to snow in Winnipeg will be a shock.

TechFest Logo Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

My first TechFest at SWU! Just me and 1,200+ friends all hooking up our laptops on a network to a zSeries mainframe for some hands on enablement. [Picture] We explored Websphere Portal, HATS, MQ, RSA and other software on a single 18 CPU zSeries running multiple LPARS. [Picture of specs] One LPAR is zOS and the other three are Redhat Linux. as you use the same software on each of the partitions you can’t tell the difference between the middleware running on zOS and Linux, which is very impressive. The mainframe is truly impressive, gone are the days of manditory raised floor and huge space requirements. This thing is sitting on a carpeted floor in the conference room. No special environment is required, just a big power cable going in. As the TechFest progresses with all the participants using the single mainframe server, they are monitoring performance of each of the LPARS to see what kind of load is hitting the system. Each if the partitiions are using under 3% of the CPU resources available, quite impressive.

Opening session was very good. The usual exec presentations from Mike & Steve, a dance presentation from Alume (sp), a song on the “Power to Win” theme with the SWU house band (the MGM has a kickin’ sound system),a musical performance by Mobius 8 , and a motivational presentation from Jamie Clarke, a mountaineer from Calgary, Alberta Canada (a nice touch for a Canadian in the heart of the US). Jamie’s presentation was very good, taking shots at the execs, repeatedly commenting on the $50K(!) awards given to four of the top performers in 2005, while excusing everything on being doped up on pain killers for a broken leg. In between all the fun and jokes to told us about his involvement in three attempts on Everest. He explained what he learned from what some would call the two failed attempts and how the third successful summit attempt effected his life. The story of the second attempt was quite poignant when his team mate, only 160 yards, 40 minutes from the summit had to make the decision that he could not safely continue on and then, on the way down, almost gave up and came close to perishing on the side of the mountain. Only the love of his family via a mutli-hour $32K satellite phone call, kept him going and moving down until the rescue team could reach him.

Lunch was great even though is was a crowded long hike to the dining tents. Salad, salmon, vegetable salads, pasta, and lots of dessert (I had the chocolate pecan pie). Maybe all the walking is a good idea! Next is the Americas Geography session followed by the Americas Architects meeting and dinner back at the Venetian. The day is already feeling long and the $3 Starbucks coffle is going to have to help me along. Sitting still for a long time in a dimly lit room can be dangerous, especially after that lunch.

Up at 5:50 and out of the Mirage by 6:20 for the hike to the MGM for the Opening General Session. Man, it’s always farther that I think, it’s a 30 minute walk, but good to be outside for a while and get some fresh air while the city is still pretty quiet. This year breakfast for Monday is also at the MGM. But getting to the MGM is only the beginning. It must be another 2 miles to the conference center where the food is and then back a long way to the MGM Grand Arena for the session. This year they have coffee & juice outside the arena and are not making you jam up and enter thru one set of doors. This really was really bad last year.

There is a motivational speaker that they have not yet identified yet, but they’ve mentioned the phrase “power to win” a couple of times and I’m thinking I’ve heard this somewhere before. They are drawing for some door prizes, but so far, no luck. Winning an iPod would be nice.

My section, which is close to the entrance, is filling up, but a lot of the arena is still vacant. It will be interesting to see how much the 30% attendance cutback effects the conference.

One hundered and forty four of the elect will get to experience the SOA (Services Oriented Architecture) Battle Day as a pre-SWU event. I’ve arrived a little early and it’s looking pretty impressive. 144 laptops with multiple Vmware images so it won’t just be theoretical lectures, but a mix of information and hands-on learning. Should be lots of fun comparing our tooling and strategy againnst the Microsoft evil empire.

Well the day was every I expected. The session was great and they covered a lot of ground. In fact, there eas more lab that you could do in a day. But, I can download the vmWare images to do the labs later. well worth coming down a couple of days early.

Today we drove from Las Vegas at 7am to Zion National Park. we arrived at about 10:30am, and checked out the visitor center to get aquainted with the area and pick up some books and maps. We spent the rest of the day hiking several trails and driving the scenic route and taking 113 pictures. Oh the freedom of digital photography. The best hike was the last at Zion Canyon Overlook. You drive up a zig-zag road and through a 1.1 mile tunnel to the trail head. The trail runs around the top edge of the canyon with spectacular views way down into the canyon and at the trail end, a spectacular view into the Zion canyon area. Drove back to Las Vegas and arrived at about 9pm.

I had some free time this afternoon to look around the Vegas strip, so I took the camera out to shoot some of the sights around the Mirage. I ended up walking way farther that I planned and was wishing I had one of these! Tomorrow is an all day session on SOA and my “roomie” will arrive later in the evening. On Sunday, we’ll be off to Zion National Park for a day of hiking. I hope to get some great shots on the hike and I’ll post those pictures Sunday night.

Line ups.

Some times they are OK, sometimes they are pain and sometimes they are frustrating when you’re running behind schedule. I had lots of time to check in at the airport and clear customs this morning. The two gate agents were working a long line 90 minutes before departure. After about 20 minutes they were joined by a coworker, and things moved along nicely. Note to self – the gate only opens 90 minutes before departure, so don’t bother showing up any earlier. The interesting thing was the

sailboat Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

line at Tim Hortons was almost as long as the check-in line.

The flight to Denver was uneventful and locating the connecting flight was no problem. The terminal seemed familiar from last years trip. However, they have just changed the departure gate for the third time, so I’m of to A42 and Las Vegas is the next stop.