Turkish Bill

Another day, another whistle-stop tour - this time Ankara.. which was nice as I usually only get to travel within Europe (yes, I know, Turkey is kind of in Europe, and yet not).
I was greeted at the airport by my driver, who I'll have to call 'Turkish Bill'. I can't remember what his real name was, and the surgeon running the training course had named him Turkish Bill, so it stuck in my head.
It turns out Turkish Bill was a retired surgeon from the Turkish Air Force and had spent some time in the 1980s on an exchange program at RAF Uxbridge in (kind of) West London, not far from where I live and (kind of) work.

Monte Carlo or Bust!

This month I was lucky enough to be sent to Monaco. As usual, I had very little time to have a look around, but managed to get a few snaps while walking between the nice hotel hosting the conference and my digs.

The conference was taking place at Le Méridien Beach Plaza Hotel, which as its name suggests, is right by the beach. It is not, however, in Monte Carlo. It is actually in Larvotto, which is one of the ten ward which make up the Principality of Monaco.

Further information about the Administrative divisions of Monaco can be found here.

Ich Bin Ein Berliner!

Sitting at the side of a stage just in case a conference phone stops working is a little bit tedious. But I only had to do it for half an hour, so for once I got to see some of the city I was working in.

I was staying at the Maritim Hotel, just south of the Tiergarten, which is surrounded by lots of museums, libraries and suchlike. But no time for wandering around soaking in the culture... I had only enough time to see a few of the important sights.

EIBTM 2009

Group Dynamics and XTOL would like to say a big thank you to all the visitors and friends that came to see us at the recent EIBTM in Barcelona in December. We had a great time meeting new and existing clients and discovering how many diverse and interesting applications there are out there.

We have always believed that a successful solution needs to have not only the best technology behind it but also the best human team. Without the experience and capability to understand each and every requirement, no technology can successfully and completely adapt and eventually will force the customer to make compromises.

With the diversity of applications that we have launched and the myriad of ideas and questions that have come back from EIBTM, we are extremely excited to be able to say 'yes' to so many projects, many of which are only loosely connected with the traditional use of interactive voting and audience response technology.

Stockholm in Spring

Whilst on a job near Stockholm I was lucky enough to get a few days off in between voting shows.

My hotel was in a small town called Södertälje, but thankfully the train station was only a 10min walk away.  The only downside was although it was down hill to the station; it was uphill on the way back!  A return ticket to Stockholm was 100SEK, and you could use it as many times as you liked within 24hours from when you bought it.

Like any capital city there are of course shops! But, since it is located in Scandinavia, everything was a tad on the expensive side…..

Fortunately there is more to Stockholm than shops.  Given that I only had three days to explore, and my only way of getting around was on foot (I didn’t fancy trying to work out the bus timetable!) I decided to stick to the city.

So, what is there to actually do in the city of Stockholm?