Ed Buford - Just Another Geek

IT Roundtable - Personal Highlights

The IT Roundtable is like taking a drink from a firehose; so much of it blew past me that I can't remember it all (I can't wait to get the notes). For me the highlights were mainly relational. I thought I'd list some of them while they are still fresh in my mind, I'm listing these in no particular order.

• ACS meet and greet at Pappasito's
  • Great Food, Great atmosphere, Fun of seeing old friends, chance to make new ones. - Thanks Dean!
• Hanging with John Dolan from Viant (works with Perimeter).
  • Always fun, thought provoking, inspiring. -John, you owe me a game of pool!  
• Joking and talking with Trace Pupke
  • He won the Best Laptop Award you know :-)
• Realizing how much I value the relationships I have with so many of the people at the roundtable.
• Hanging with Jason Lee
  • Someone get that guy a blog!
• Dinner with Jason Powell, Terry Chapman from Fellowship , Mike Gold, Gina Buresch, Vicki Dolikian,  Beth Hayes, David Jenkins, all from Willow Creek.
• Late night chat in the parking lot with Jason Powell, Jimmy Williams, and Mark Stephenson.
• Mike Gold's Presentation called Flood.
• After hours chat with the guys from DataCore.
  • Trying to get my mind around storage virtualization makes my head hurt.
• Laughing with Jason Powell
• Building a friendship with Jason Kergosien
• Dinner with David Drinnon and a personal tour of Second Baptist
  • WOW
• Getting to know Fady Eldeiry
• Food

Thanks Tony and Chris McGuffin for making all this possible. You guys did a stellar job.

Best Laptop Award

Trace Pupke and I went toe to toe with our laptops earlier this year, read about it here.

Although, I had good shot at keeping up with Trace's sweet laptop, I traded my Lenovo in for a Mac and had to concede that Trace did a much better laptop than I do.

Sooo I'm pleased to announce that Trace is the winner of the Geekiest Laptop Award! Here is a photo of Trace receiving this sweet Post-it award.

Congrats Trace!  

In Texas

We're just about to kick off presentations and I thought I'd give some highlights to date.

After landing in Houston we were treated to super service by Enterprise car rental. There were nine people behind the counter and they were ready to serve. The check-in process was speedy and then the attendant walked us out to the car and made sure we were set. I've never seen service like this at any car rental place.

Then we headed to Sugar Land.

 

We checked into our hotel and we were right next door to Pappasito's where we ACS kicked things off with a meal and great conversations.

Here are some pix from the meet and greet.

 

Here's Dean eating some of the tasty food provided by ACS

....and here's Jason polishing off the last slab of ribs.

More to come.