Dallas, Texas

Greetings, friends!

This week I'm in good old Dallas, Texas!  I'm here for an entire week, participating in my company's annual Executive Forum.  I guess I'm considered an executive...who knew? ; )  I arrived in Dallas on Monday evening and was lucky enough to go to dinner with my oldest son and his wife.  They're a great couple and I had a blast catching up with them.  They were nice enough to take me to a favorite steakhouse, the Salt Grass:

Needless to say, I enjoyed the meal ; )  If you're ever in Texas, treat yourself to a great steakhouse.

The rest of the week was spent in....meetings.  More on that in a minute ; )  The AMD Executive Forum was held at the Hilton Anatole Hotel.  This is one of the LARGEST hotels I've ever seen, outside of Las Vegas.  There are two massive atriums in this hotel:

This is the interior of one of the atriums...that sculpture hanging up there was massive...

A better photo (not mine) to show you what it's like at night...

This is a quick shot of the second atrium

As I mentioned before, the week was simply a series of meetings.  There were about 500 of us "executives" there - everyone from VPs to Directors.  With over 12,000 employees at the company, the number doesn't seem so big, until you're standing in line - waiting for dinner ; )

The best meetings were held in giant ballrooms at the hotel.  Here's what it looked like:

This is the best I could do, given the circumstances...

We discussed our corporate strategy for 2012, as well as a variety of new initiatives and products for the year.  I normally am NOT a big fan of these type of meetings, but I found this year's Forum really good.  Part of that reason was due to a guest speaker.  We regularly have guest speakers that come to address us.  Sometimes, these are b-o-r-i-n-g corporate presenters.  Other times, they are inspirational (see this post).  I never know who the speakers will be, until I arrive at the event.  I was thrilled to find out that the guest speaker this year would be Dr. Clayton Christensen.  Most people only know Dr. Christensen as the author of some of the most-influential books on corporate strategy:

Others know him as one of the most-famous professors of the Harvard Business School.  To me, he's actually a personal hero...and here's why.  Over a two year period, Dr. Christensen survived a heart attack, advanced-stage cancer, diabetes...and a stroke!!  The stroke actually impacted the part of his brain that controls speech.  This guy had to learn-how-to-talk-all-over-again.  Seriously.  He said he actually used Rosetta Stone English to learn everything again.  You can read a great profile of him in Forbes Magazine here. Want to know the icing on the cake?  He's a Mormon.  In fact, he was what we call an Area Authority for the Church, over most of New England.  Yup, the guy's one of my heroes:

During the week, I had the chance to speak in front of our entire sales force.  I think it went well, as several of them asked me to deliver the same presentation at Best Buy and Dell.

At the end of the week, after the long series of meetings were over, I had a chance to grab lunch with my son.  There was no doubt about where we were going to eat:

I've written about Cane's Chicken Fingers before.  It's another of my favorite stops in Dallas.  It's a good thing that my son loves this place...or things would have been really awkward ; )

Although I was gone for an entire week, I was busy enough to keep me from deep depression, away from my family ; )  I was able to return home on Friday, several hours ahead of schedule.  YES! An excellent finish to a great week...