Saturday night – Marrakesh

Would you know we’re riding
On the Marrakesh Express
Would you know we’re riding
On the Marrakesh Express, they’re taking me to Marrakesh
All on board the train, all on board the train

I’ve had that song in my head constantly since getting her this afternoon. I’m in Marrakesh, ‘the red city’.. everything her is made of red brick.. the sun is hot, the air is dry and it’s beautiful, at least in or little protected enclave. Tomorrow I’m going to venture into the city..

I’m here with a team of fellow IBMers helping support the International Computer Programming Contest.. about 120 teams from around the world are here to compete to be the top programming team.. They are here after regional eliminations that included an astounding 37,000 students !.. These are truly the best of the best..

IBM is the main sponsor and coordinator of the conference for nearly two decades. I’ ve been to one of these before back in 2005 in Shanghai. I appreciate how much work it is to pull this off.

Whats exciting for me this year is that I’m here to talk about something I love, the internet of things.. and how our tools support it. It’s fun to be this psyched about he stuff I’m doing at work..

I need to get back to my talk.. so here are a few scenes from ‘the red city’. You see how it gets it name