Wednesday was a long day.
First I was invited to a VIP breakfast executive briefing and presentation by IBM at 7:45am. The event, in which IBM showcased their Watson technology and three partner companies talked about how they are leveraging NLP capabilities, lasted until 12:30pm, but I stayed for an extra hour for a meeting with an IBM executive.
Then I headed back to the office for 3 conference calls. By 7:00pm I was ready to go to the Social Radar startup launch party Stephanie and I had been invited to.
A friend got me a VIP pass for the 2014 Scope Basel Art Show (thank you, Jorge!). I had it all planned out: since I had a meeting in Stuttgart the day before, I could drive to nearby Basel, attend the VIP opening, and then fly back to New York. But the Stuttgart meeting was cancelled, so I changed my plane ticket, and returned to New York in time to go to the Amos Lee concert in Brooklyn`s Prospect Park with my wife.
After a weekend in Valencia, last Monday I went to Madrid. Awesome high speed train from Valencia in the morning, business presentation, and a delicious Japanese lunch at Kabuki with my friends Juan and Alvaro. So good was the lunch and company that I almost missed my flight. It did not help that I went to Terminal 4 as usual, when my flight to London departed from Terminal 1, and in the Adolfo Suarez Madrid Barajas airport, it takes a long time to go from terminal to terminal.
Last Thursday I arrived in Nice just in time to catch a very nice and expensive taxi (al least they are almost all brand new and very clean Mercedes Benz cars) that took me to the IBM Client Center in nearby La Gaude for my first IBM European Cloud Advisory Board meeting.
It was an interesting meeting, attended by 15 business executives, investors and analysts. Not only they were all very smart, but I was brain dead after the long red-eye flight.
Last Wednesday I participated in IBM’s Federal Summit at the Ronald Reagan Federal Building in Washington DC.
Business aside, it was one scary meeting. There were control systems all over. From the IRS to airports, to National Security, the demos were much more advanced and comprehensive than anything you may have seen in a movie. Big Brother to the Nth degree. They know it all about you. In a second. You either get paranoid-serious about security, encryption and privacy, or you might as well forget completely about your privacy.
Last week, although I had torn the ligaments on my right ankle, I travelled on a quick trip to South America for business.
After a 12 hour flight I arrived early in the morning in Santiago de Chile and had to go straight to a business meeting because the hotel did not have my room available and check-in time was 2:00pm. What was worse: when I finally made it back to the hotel, after a full day of flying and another full day of work, I had to stand hammers banging on the wall until after midnight.
