Greetings from Software University in Las Vegas

In this era of constant corporate pressure to cut costs, it has been my good fortune to have been selected as one of a handful of IBM Global Services people to tag along with 10,000 of my closest friends from IBM Software Group to the training event IBM Software University 2006 in Las Vegas, Nevada.  The window from my hotel room in the MGM Grand looks out across the Las Vegas Strip at the New York New York, Excalibur, Tropicana, and Mandalay Bay casino hotels.  I have an obstructed view of the Luxor pyramid and the top few floors of Monte Carlo as well.

The opening session for all 10,000 of us included some door prizes (Unfortunately, I did not win the iPod Nano.), some high-tech entertainment, a talk by Steve Mills, more talk by Mike Borman, and an inspirational speaker/mountain climber/explorer named Jamie Clarke.  If you detected a correlation between the trials and tribulations of scaling Mount Everest and the trials and tribulations of taking on the competition everyday in the software industry, you were dead on.  Jamie Clarke was great and I’d recommend him to speak at any corporate event.

I have one more huge session in just a half an hour that includes all of us here from the Americas.  However, the rest of my week will be spent with my I/T architect peers.  The primary topic is likely to be service oriented architectures (SOA) and all the issues associated with making it a reality in world of our clients.  I look forward to the interaction with old colleagues and for the chance to make new acquaintances with like interests.  It should be a great week!

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