doug.wilson's blog

Well, not in the US election, although I am watching the results come in with great anticipation.  The results are in fo the trade show, however.  The RealComm staff featured the CEPort BSP product in their innovation showcase today.  After the presentation, we had more people come by the booth than we could handle!

The response from the developers and integrators was beyond positive.  Many people saw the excellent productization of integrated data and the inclusion of enterprise data to be a great differentiator against our competition.  We even got some nods from some of the established figureheads in our industry.

We've set up meetings for later in the week, and look forward to moving those conversations forward into our first independent implementations of CEPort.

Here is a view from the trade show floor:

Is awesome in its scale.  I counted 31 cranes in the Dubai sky just from the airport to our hotel.  The skyscrapers are beautiful, although many seem to argue how practical some of them are in their construction given the climate here.

Traffic is pretty dense during the mornings and evenings, with more detours through construction zones than not.  If you think I am kidding, I am not.

Most developers here seem focused on large, multi-use residential and commercial spaces.  Universities seem big too.  I don't see a lot of large corporate single-tenant developers, at least in the circles we are running in at RealTech.

The point of our trip is to meet prospective buyers in the Mideast for Continental Electric's new CEPort Building Services Portal.  You can check out product info here.

And how were we going to meet these folks?  At a trade show, of course.  Their isn't an industry segment around that isn't catered to by some special regional event that allows suppliers and customers to get together and learn a lot about each other.  In this case, it's RealTech 2008.

Our customer has launched their new building services portal in September and its time for the world to learn about it.  We'll be doing product demonstrations for two days and getting to know some of the integrators, developers, and technology firms curently servicing the Middle East and providing the technology and services required to make these buildings state-of-the-art.

Thirteen hours in economy class on United flight 976 was an experience.  Although I must say, thanks to my ability to sleep, not as bad as I had feared.  The long flight is taken almost in complete darkness, as everyone closes their blinds to allow as much sleep as possible.

Movie options included Wanted, Kit Kitteridge, Diminished Capacity, and Tropic Thunder.  One out of four ain't bad.  I'll leave it for you to decide which I settled on, but for a hint it did involve blackface, a tivo, Tom Cruise in a fat suit and a friendly little chap, who we now refer to as "half-squat".

Most surreal moment of the trip:  It's 8:30 PM and I am stretching my legs.  I look out at one of the few exposed windows and look down on the Tigris river.  Yes, we were at 35,000 feet flying directly over Baghdad, where over 200,000 Americans are risking their lives.  I go back to my seat with couples poring over travel books, kids eating their snacks and watching the Suite Life of Zack and Cody on the Disney channel and it seems quite wrong to be so oblivious to their sacrifices.

I will be leaving Saturday for Dubai.  This is a great opportunity to help one of our clients launch their product in the mideast!  Expect daily posts from the region as I learn about technology and development in this exciting part of the world!