Thursday, September 16, 2004

Leaving KL

I'm sitting in the Kuala Lumpur airport - my flight to Beijing leaves in about half an hour. I didn't get a chance to blog all day yesterday, so here's a quick recap:

• I've run into a bunch of people who I first met at TechEd Malaysia 2002. In particular, Adrian and Rathi who both wanted to see pictures of Patrick. The big bummer of only spending two days here is that I didn't get to do much more that the conference.
• After the sessions on Wednesday, I hung out with a bunch of the other speakers at dinner. Several of the RD's who spoke at TechEd US also came to our Architect Road Rally and had a great time. Always nice to be told you threw a great party.
• Thursday started  with Gurpreet's session on Architecture Vision & Direction. I didn't think this session did as well as the EA talk the day before. Part of that comes from the fact the EA talk set a high bar, but some of it comes from the fact that the V&D talk wasn't as polished. In contrast, I did much better with my Metropolis Thursday than the SOA Data talk on Wednesday. Maybe I just need one talk to get back in the groove - I usually think I do better in my second session.
• After our sessions, lunch, and hanging around in the cabana with some other attendees, Aaron (the local Architect Evangelist) drove Gurp and I around Putrajaya. Pat often points out when he presents Metropolis that you can't bulldoze Boston just because the roads aren't straight. However, you can build a new city about a half an hour away and move into it when it's finished. That's Putrajaya - the new administrative center of Malaysia.  It was stunning - huge and ultra modern. But it was also strange as it is completely underutilized, so far anyway. We also did a little shopping and I was able to find a few things for the family back home.
• Last night we had a regional architect dinner, where we got to hang out with a bunch of the local architects in the region. Lots of good discussion.

Next stop - China!