The first exciting post
Yup, I’m going to attempt to do semi-live blog Splash 2023. I’ve done this before with other conferences in My Previous Technical Life and with luck it brings a flavor of the conference to others. With more luck and a modicum of sleep, I’ll be able to bring Splash to you on an it-only-lags-by-one-day basis.
A note about the coverage: this is my take on the conference, it’s going to look at it from a technical perspective, and I’ll do a selectively-extroverted geek’s take on the social aspect of it all. There’ll be plenty of other perspectives out there and I encourage you to have a read of all of them to get a holistic view.
Today’s (yesterday’s) content will be light as the below will show, but I pinky promise it’ll get more involved as the week goes on till I collapse from exhaustion.
What I didn’t attend
Day 1 of Splash is for customers an education day. There were six classes for existing customers, five classes for prospects. As I’m not a customer and not a prospect and by most people’s reckoning, un-educatable, I didn’t attend. I suspect those who did attend those sessions got their money’s worth.
So, Cameron, since you skipped free training, what did you do?
Transport
I drove here. It was glorious. A beautiful day, moderate traffic, and no flying. Three hours of blissful solitude. Glorious.
As always, driving becomes more interesting when approaching cities. Philly insanity I’ve dealt with all of my life; Washington drivers take crazy to new and exciting levels.
This is the second major conference in 30+ years of going to these things that I’ve not flown to. The other one was also in (Splash 2023 is near) Washington DC. The Northeast is an expensive area, the number of big conference centers (this is a hotel and conference center in one) is smaller than you might think, and the Performance Management gods do not shine brightly down upon me. With any luck I’ll not be working another 30 years, so I fear that the chances of doing this again are low.
Booth
Did I help set up the booth? Thankfully for BDA, no. My barely functional understanding of hand tools precludes anything but the most basic of tasks, and never near anything like this:
Yup, that’s what car geeks think it is: a real honest-to-God 356 Speedster. Gaze upon it and marvel:
I have to get a ride in this thing. Somehow. I’ll take just sitting in it, actually. We’ll see.
What does one of the rarest Porsches have to do with CPM? It’s all to do with the BDA’s theme for this year: spies/espionage/intelligence. This conference is a mere 20 miles away from Langley. Fictional spies drive not-at-all-inconspicuous cars, classic sports cars are cool, and the goal of partners is to meet and greet. This certainly ought to get attention.
The first night’s party
That explains this:
Look at the chap third from the left. Nehru jacket? Yes. Outsized moustache. Yes. Grey cat (look at the crook of his left arm)? Yes. We have our Bond Villian. And yes, that is the usually-quite-serious BDA Chief Technology Officer. Never let it be said that all work is serious.
Also, I was in bed by 10, so fingers crossed I’ll get sleep this conference.
What’s next?
The meat of the conference starts in 30 minutes (it’s just 7:30). I’ll take more photos, do my best to remember the important bits, and give you my take on it all. I may even hit my goal of live blogging Splash.
Be seeing you.
