A bit of this - a bit of that !

Well - it has been a while since I have updated this so certainly it seems to be time. Much has happened in the past month so I'll just touch on the highlights:

• CEBIT in Hanover Germany was very good and I enjoyed it a lot. The sheer size of the show is over whelming with some 6200 vendors in about 28 buildings. I was looking for innovative technology solutions not quite ready for prime time, and certainly there were several to choose from in the areas of data analysis, personal use devices, visualization tools and collaboration technology. Well worth while and I'm already looking forward to next year.


• the Strategic News Service dinner in London (see http://www.tapsns.com/london/2006/index.php ). For anyone that follows Mark Anderson and can get by his sometimes overly pompous style, I recommend trying to catch him in person at least once as he is often right on the money and quite a good speaker. He is just recently back from China and like most folks who have visited there came away impressed with what he saw. Its often said, and I think possibly not far off the mark, that if your children are not considering picking up Chinese as a second language, then its possible they may be disadvantaged in the next twenty years. The scale of what is happening today in China defies belief and shows little sign of slowing down.


• My real boss and I are getting ready to move back to Canada this summer - we are both looking forward to doing so, as while the past six years here in Europe have been great, there really is no place quite like home and of course both boys are in Canada at university. We are in the process of having our home in Calgary updated, and working long distance with the various suppliers is proving to be interesting - so far, so good though and things seem to be moving along well.


• This week we have been in Spain at one of our time-shares and the weather has been great. We are just down the coast from Gibraltar and can actually see "The Rock "quite clearly from here. The unit we are staying in has a high speed internet connection so being able to work without interruption, and in very pleasant surroundings has been quite relaxing.

The next few months will be quite busy - I'll try to capture some notes here as things move along.