Alec Saunders SquawkBox

If you were ever in the Scouting movement you know their motto:  Be Prepared.  Well, that goes for demo’s too.  The last couple of days have been an illustration of everything that can go wrong with a demo.  I have to report, though, that we’ve ridden through all the bumps with aplomb.

Monday morning we arrived at our first meeting.  We quickly discovered that the location had no wireless access, and we depend heavily on wireless for our demo.  We agreed to show the slides, and then reschedule to another location if there was still interest in seeing the demo.  Part way through the slide presentation, their projector died.  It totally lost synch.  Two minutes of futzing around and it still wouldn’t work.  The solution: everyone get cozy!  Spin the tablet around, and continue the presentation.  The presentation was compelling enough that we’re going to go ahead with the rescheduled demo today.

Tuesday morning, an hour before a really important meeting, the carrier we depend on had a massive network outage.  The carrier we are peered with also had a software upgrade, introducing a CODEC mismatch.  At that point, we had no ability for one carrier to communicate with the other, and no ability for the iotum Relevance Engine to talk with the first carrier.  While we tried to sort out the issues with the two carriers, we simultenously configured the demonstration software to talk with our lab system and a partner’s switch.  Demo up and running!  In the end, the carriers sorted the issues out and we were able to demo using the original setup, but it was touch and go for a few minutes.

Words of wisdom for demonstrators: Be Prepared, and be nimble. Anything can happen.

Howard and I had dinner last night at Thai Ginger in Redmond Town Center.  We ate with my friend, and hiking buddy, BJ Whalen, currently still a program manager at Microsoft.  Anyway, if you’re out in Redmond for any reason, eat at Thai Ginger.   The food was great.  I had the four star Panang Curry (sweet basil and coconut milk curry sauce - YUM), and it was just the right heat. 

It was interesting to walk around Redmond Town Center.  REI is still there, and there’s a Macy’s now too.  However, you can really tell that the boom boom days of the late 1990’s are over.  The mall used to be packed full of shi shi shops, but now there are more than a few vacancies.

Stopped in at Redmond Fine Wine as well to pick up a bottle to drink with Andy & co in the valley on Saturday night.  Redmond Fine Wine has the best selection on the east side of Lake Washington, and they’re always very helpful.

Andy Abramson has just been named to Sightspeed’s Advisory Board.   It’s a great match.  We’ve been working with Andy for about six months now, and I don’t know of a harder-working communications professional in the VoIP industry than Andy.  Congratulations to both Sightspeed, and Andy.