I have to say that I’ve never worked on the scale of what IBM brings to the table.  In the past month and in the coming three weeks, I will have attended four IBM hosted conferences – two in Las Vegas and two in Orlando.

Let’s just talk about finances first.  With no less than 6000 people per conference paying a minimum of $2000 per person, the math works out that the revenue coming in for these events is in excess of $12 million dollars.  These are marketing blintzes on a scale that I have never seen.

The picture you see here was from IMPACT 2008.  The specifics?  The first day the theme is red-hot SOA – the entire staff is dressed in red and the banners and collateral are all red.  The next day?  The theme is going green and everything matches from people’s shirts to the marketing banners.  Someone did some incredible planning.  The third day – it’s on to blue.  Speaking of big budget, the keynote talks and main theater was emceed by Drew Carey and the cast of "Whose Line is it Anyway".  It kicks off with no less than a 40 person marching band, Harley Davidsons roaring into the auditorium, a 30 minute show of Cirque du Soleil … The "special event" on Wednesday night was the B-52s rock band live, with Cirque du Soleil performances before and after, fireworks, and more special performers than you have ever seen.  And that was just one of the the "technical" shows …

I have to say that the "IBM scale of big" outdid itself last week at the Rio.  For some reason, I was upgraded to the Masquerade Suite – a "hotel room" of 1800 square feet.  It had a 180 degree view of the city, dining room with a wet bar, and one and a half baths.  In fact, one of the bathrooms was larger than my living room.   Actually, on a comparative scale, our house has a smaller square footage than this.

Regardless, let me be home with my family building 24 sq. ft. playsets in the backyard.  It’s much more enjoyable.  Smile.  🙂

Do you know what this week is?  Update week!  That means that every day between now and Friday will find an update on this site.  Cool eh?  You probably weren’t even aware of this Deptonia based holiday.  It is the one claim to fame of the Deptonian people.

Today will merely bring us back to the incredible travels of the past few weeks.  I’ve been across the pond and back twice so far this month visiting the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Israel.  I have to say that every time I fly into Ben Gurion airport, I feel like I’m coming home.  There’s something about that country that feels like home to me.  Coming in over Tel Jaffa and seeing the lights below made me wish that we were back there.  Although it was 3:00am local time, my first call was to Heidi to ask if she wasn’t sure about not moving there.  She assured me that while she loved being there … it was a little far from home.  And here I thought we lived in a connected world.

Solemnity and gaiety!

The first morning I was there, I was giving a three hour presentation from 9am to 12pm.  I didn’t realize that May 1st happens to be the Holocaust Memorial day for the nation of Israel.  At 10am, in the middle of my presentation, the air raid sirens went off over the entire country.  For one minute, everyone, and I mean everyone, stops and stands for one minute of silence.  And here I thought I remember the "minute of silence" for Remembrance Day in Canada being somber.

Thankfully I had some prior warning.  At 3:30am in the morning, between myself and the taxi driver on the way to the hotel, we went back and forth over the various Israeli wars, the last war in Lebanon and the "solutions" to the conflict.  Of course, there can’t be, nor will there ever be resolutions to the problems in the Middle East.  Peace in our time?  Anyway, through the course of this, he told me to be prepared to stop everything at 10am so it wasn’t a complete surprise.  (You might think our conversation strange, but everyone from the taxi drivers to the store keepers, want to talk about religion, politics and war.  There is no such thing as a PC society.)

The gaiety was derived from the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel only one week later – May 8th.  The Star of David was draped everywhere.  You think you see a lot of Senators flags in Ottawa over playoff season?  Every vehicle and most houses were flying the national flag.  It was blue and white everywhere you looked.  I would have loved to have been there.  Still, there was a sense of impending … something … Not that numbers equate to anything, but something about 6 x 10 made me wonder if I wouldn’t hear a shout that week.

Now that would be reason to smile.  🙂