What a long strange trip its’ been.. I’m now lying in bed trying to figure out what time my body thinks it is… I’m trying to figure out how I crammed everything into the last day.. Yesterday’s event at Skolkovo was really fun and interesting. There were 1000 IBM business partners attending the forum in the Skolkovo Business school. it’s an amazing building.

 

. I got to see many of our company’s products and customers at work.. and n Cyrillic, no less.   I gave two  keynotes yesterday.. one to senior IT professionals, then the second, bigger one to about 500 C-level execs from across the contry. It was a little intimidating. but bun. my talk was done in simultaneous translation .. .. and I know I’m a fast  and quirky speaker.. somehow the translators kept up because the audience reacted in all the right ways.. I felt good about the talk..  Here’s the country general manager about to introduce me.. he was a nice guy..

The crowd was great.. and I was swamped with questions afterwards.. that’s always a good sign.

here I am with my friend Tatiania.. she was my ‘handler’ yesterday.. keeping me out of trouble..

this woman is one of the tob tweeters in russia !

hey.. that’s me !  D-chon koen

here’s a cool compuyter controlled water foutan they had..

setting up for my sn3 talk… (no pressure !)

Our comms team..

. last night’s party at the Skolkovo event went until about 10:30.. then Ian. Artur and Tatyianna and I went out for dinner and beers.

I got back to the hotel at 2.. and packed to be ready for my 4 AM cab.. i did get abotu 45 minutes of sleep, I think..
The reception after the signing ceremony was pretty lavish.. lot of good snacks and vodka everywhere, uve iever been to a work  party like this they had this guy drawning charactures .

Pretty nice !

4AM was pretty early.. but at least there wast any traffic. It was a joy to drive around on empty streets.  (but we did manage to get pulled over by the  the police at one point

I boarderd the palne to berlin about 7L40..  The short stop in berlin  was nice..   I dropped  a samstone  of beside the driveway

Very nice !!!!

then .. after ‘only’ 21.5 hor s f traveling. I was back in Vermont.. the place looked so beautiful with it’s blannket of snoe.

and here’s our litle valleyfrom the air..

Diane picked me up at the Burlington airport at 4L30 and we went right over to Echo to get ready for the ‘Thats Brilliant!’ event.. it really et great.. thanks so much to Jeromme Cann who did most of the real work. alongside the echo staff,

we had oover 160 people there tonight.. whats more, people were having fun !!! here’s Phelan getting chargeds

glad that s brilliant went wel. glad tavel worked well.. and glad… finally .. for a chance ot sleep..

nite all, note sam

 

there’s no place like hiime !

-me