I guess you could say I am a bit of a Delphi groupie, especially for tours and events . . . . The new Delphi 2009 Productivity Tour reminds me of the Delphi 6 Release Tour.
The nearest tour stop for the Delphi 6 tour was in Salt Lake City, Utah and I lived in Boise, Idaho (I live on the northern Washington coast now.) So a friend of mine and I took the day off of work and left really early to drive down to Salt Lake City (about 5 hours away). We made it in by 10 AM for the start of the presentation.
This was the first time I met Anders Ohlsson. It was extra memorable because the airlines lost his luggage and presentation laptop so he was in sweat pants, a T-shirt and on a laptop that didn’t work right with the projector (couldn’t show on the projector and the screen at the same time, so he had to keep looking over his shoulder.) It was still a great presentation. Of course we couldn’t get enough so we took Anders to lunch and grilled him with some more questions. He ended up helping us with some tough problems we had with our current development and saved us a lot of headaches. As far as I know that company still uses the framework he helped us develop over lunch. It was a good investment. Maybe I should have expensesed it. . . .
We found out Anders was presenting at the users group that night too, so we stuck around for that in hopes we would win a copy of Delphi 6. We didn’t win Delphi, but I was glad I we stuck around anyway since I won a cool Delphi hat that I still own. It says “Delphi does it all, especially Windows.” We decided not to stick around for the after meeting party since we had to work the next day.
My friend was going to trade off on the drive home so I could get some sleep too, but that was when he discovered he couldn’t drive a stick. That ended up being OK because we discovered Mountain Dew Code Red (a new flavor at the time) for the trip home. I believe my friend said it tasted like “Manna from Heaven.” Not sure he had a reliable frame of reference, but it was amusing none the less.
Hopefully the Delphi 2009 Productivity Tour is stoping in a city near you. If not, then it sounds like a good chance for a road trip! Be sure to register for all the events you plan on attending. Remember, the price of airfare is actually down right now, and flying across the country is a great way to support the economy!
Who knows, maybe I will see you there . . . .