The UK beckons

I frequently grump that leaving Andalucia is something I only do under duress. Anyhoo, next week I’ll be winging my way to the UK for a week. It will be the longest time I’ve spent there since my Freelander broke down and we were stranded for 10 days. That was seven years ago. From what I can see, I’ll need to pack my winter woolies, just as we were getting ready to put on shorts and t-shirts. Dang! It’s also the first time I’ll have traveled any real distance this year. That’s a good thing for me and the environment. So what’s on the menu:

I arrive late Friday and will meet up with fellow SAP Mentors for a few beers and war story exchange.

Next and I really must be crazy, I’m spending a Saturday with SAPper ‘make people’ for Inside Track at IBM’s Southbank offices. There’s a good menu of discussion on offer including one of my favourite topics – certification. From Nigel James blog:

This has been a hot topic in the SAP community lately. New Mentor Michael Koch is currently running a survey on how certification relates to contractors. You can complete this survey here and it would be great to see some good results from that survey at the unconference.

I’ll be filming and getting feedback from the ‘make guys.’ Such is the passion among SAP Mentors that people are slated to come over from Norway and Germany to participate. Regardless of how geeky it gets, it should be a fun day.

Next I’m hoping to catch up with the IT Counts/ICAEW people. The community is growing, there’s some excellent content and now that the IT Faculty is under Richard Anning’s lead, I expect to see some great things emerge. Richard is a rare bird – a CA who has had a life in marketing. He knows the industry extremely well so should be the bridge the industry needs between itself and ICAEW.

Then it’s on to a session with Dave Turner of  CODA and more filming. CODA is releasing the next stage in its CODA2go service built on the Force.com platform. I’m guessing that many people are wondering why an on-premise accounting software stalwart like CODA would go the saas route. These and many other questions are just some of the things I’ll be addressing.

Next it’s on to Cloudforce, the Salesforce.com one day conference replacing the much larger event that had been planed. My good friend Vinnie Mirchandani was at a similar event last week in New York. His assessment gives me plenty of ammunition with which to kick off discussions. But it will be the customers I am most interested in meeting. I may do more fillming.

Subject to anything else turning up that’s busting urgent, I’m hoping to get some family time. My father will be 81 next week and I’ve not seen him in a couple of years. He’s a great teacher and skilled engineer. He used to make copper microwave filters for satellites. As far as I know, he was the only person who could make them without needing a CNC machine. Unfortunately, the hand craft skills with which he grew up are rapidly fading.

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