Tag: auslug12

Round up of trip to Tokyo and AusLUG

I’m back in the office after two weeks away for going to Tokyo, AusLUG in Melbourne, Australia, and then Easter vacation. While the latter is of no particular interest to anyone (I think) my trip might be. Let us get the most obvious thing out of the way first – we did a lot of flying. Besides having been in Antwerp, Belgium, on the Thursday/Friday for BLUG before going on this trip we went Copenhagen-Singapore-Tokyo-Singapore-Melbourne-Singapore-Frankfurt-Copenhagen in 8 days! The trip earned us about 27000 air miles and with the circurmference of the Earth being 24900 miles we actually went around the World and then some.

The trip started out in Tokyo where we had 2 days (Monday and Tuesday) of meetings with potential OnTime partners and with IBM. Great meetings and very good to meet local partners and learn about Japanese culture and language. Nothing is simple in Japan let alone the calendar. In Japan they actually have four (4) calendars that they use those being the international (the one we use in most of the World), the Imperial (based on the Japanese emperors), the Buddhist calendar and the 6 day Japanese calendar. The latter is not used in business but it does mean that a calendar product will need to support all if not most of them. At least at the UI layer. Besides business we had some time although not a lot for a look at Tokyo and to sample the local cuisine. While we unfortunately didn’t get to try Kobe steak (top of the list for next time) we did have local sushi (a must) and sampled sashimi with raw chicken and raw liver. Many thanks to the IBM’ers we met and to Atsushi Sato (@acchan777) for taking us out to dinner on the Monday.

On Wednesday we flew on to Melbourne via Singapore and landed early Thursday morning (7am). After a cab ride (through what can best be characterized as chaotic traffic) and a quick shower we were on scene at AusLUG to catch the last 30 minutes of the keynote. Not bad planning.

The event was excellent both from a technical, business and personal perspective. It’s always good to go to interesting sessions, learn new stuff and meet up with the friends I got at the inaugural AusLUG in Sydney. I spoke at two sessions – one on Thursday at 2pm and one on Friday morning at 8.30am where I slept through 3 alarms only to wake at the calendar reminder I set for 30 minutes before I should present! Let me just say that I didn’t shower before the the session but I made it (we stayed only 5-10 minutes away on foot) so all was good. Lesson learned? Set multiple timers – and go easy (easier) on the drinks the night before. 🙂 The night before was a very fun one as we went drinking after the AusLUG dinner. Great night out.

After the conference on Friday night we went to see “footy” at the MCG as part of the speaker/sponsor thank-you-event together with approx. 79000 other nice people. And boy was it excellent fun! Lets just say that if I’m invited to go see footy in the future I’ll go anytime! Great event and a great conclusion to our trip.

Saturday we went for a stroll about the city, chilled at the apartment, watched some footy on the telly and had some bieeerh (think that’s how the native spell beer) before we headed to the airport for our 1am fligth back home. What a trip – many memories and many good oppportunities to persue in the Japanese market.

Going to AusLUG


I’m happy to say that I once more will be joining the AusLUG crew downunder for the Australian Lotus Usergruoup on March 29-30 in Melbourne, Australia. I have been wanting to go all along but we had to make sure it was possible before I started getting my hopes up. So I’m very happy to say that everything has fallen into place and that I’ll be on site for AusLUG 2012! So thrilled.

I’m even more thrilled to say that I’ll be speaking as well. The first session is on Thursday at 2pm where I’ll be giving my “Easy as Pie – Creating Widgets for IBM Connections” session to get you up to speed on developing widgets for IBM Connections. On Friday at 8.30am I’ll be on stage again presenting my “Plug yourself in and your applications will never be the same! (An introduction to plugin development for Notes and Sametime)”. I really hope to see you all for both sessions on topics I think are extremely important to you as a developer.

This year the OnTime team will consist of myself and my manager Jens overgaard Dinesen (@jensovergaard) as we will both be making the trip to Melbourne. On our way (because what isn’t on ones way when going to Oz) we’re stopping for two days in Tokyo to meet with IBM and potential partners for OnTime in Japan. We’re very excited about this trip and hope everything will pan out. We will not be in until Thursday morning at 7am but will be there all of Thursday, Friday and Saturday and looking forward to meeting everyone there.

See ya!