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Collaborate 2011 - Day 1

Travelling to Orlando went smooth. Very smooth even. The first leg to Boston arrived about a half hour early and as I was sitting right in front of the Economy class, I could leave the plane as one of the first. So I arrived at the border securty as the third non-US citizen. So checkin in the US costed about two minutes. I even arrived at the luggage belt before it actually started running - usually my bag is already off the belt when I arrive there. After an almost two hour layover, in the second plane I managed to get two seats at the exit row. So I could move wherever I liked. And at Orlando airport a taxi was immediately available so I arrived at the hotel around 6:30 AM. After some real American food (burger, beer & fries) I hit the sack around 10. 
The next morning I managed to stay more or less asleep until 7. From 9 to 12 I sat at the pool until it was getting too hot and went to the registration of Collaborate.The conference is in the Orlando Conference Centre. I thought Moscone in San Francisco was a big place, but this is way bigger. The staff rides around on Segways...
Today there was only one session on my schedule : "Fusion, Soup to Nuts". The whole idea was to show all the technical details that's used for building Fusion Apps, by a number of different presenters. I think the idea is quite good, but the operation could be better. Alongside that, the projector screen was way too small for that big room. And one of the speakers couldn't resize his resolution, so his demo was unreadable for everyone who wasn't at the front row. The sequel ended with a presentation of Fusion Applications (by Debra, who else). It even contained a semi-live demo - a.k.a. a viewlet. As Fusion Apps isn't available yet, they weren't allowed to do a live demo. But, I have to admit, the user interface looks very, very slick!
This first day of Collaborate ended with a reception, with some food (pizza slices etc) and drinks. I bumped into Borkur and his colleague Peter (from RittmanMead) and also met Gwen and a colleague of hers (from Pythian).
All in all a nice first day - looking forward to tomorrow as the "real" conference starts!

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