Dear Friends:
Last week, I had the opportunity to travel to the San Francisco Bay Area. As you can tell from the frequency of posts, I'm not traveling too much these days. However, this was a special trip for work.
When I arrived at the San Francisco International Airport, they had a special art exhibit on display. I think they must have known I was coming, because this exhibit was custom-made for me. It was all about Japanese toys:
The displays were focused on the history of Japanese toys, with special emphasis on Speed Racer, robots, Hello Kitty and Ultraman. As a kid, I can vividly remember watching Speed Racer cartoons on TV. They were unlike anything else at the time. There was a great deal of drama and action - combined with awesome car stunts and technology.
Ultraman is another show that I remember watching as a kid. I'm sure glad that some TV station decided to import the show. The premise was pretty simple, but it was my first exposure to giant robots fighting giant alien monsters.
A bulk of my toy collection is made up of Japanese toys, as I love how creative, colorful and dramatic they are. A big part of any trip to Tokyo is checking out the latest toys across town.
After arriving, I had a couple of hours before my first meeting. I quickly determined that I probably wasn't going to see my daughter, who lives in the Bay Area, the entire week. She teaches an early-morning Seminary class and I was going to be at client dinners each night. I couldn't bear the idea that I was so close to her, and not be able to see her. I decided to drive north to Sausalito, which was about 45 minutes north, and surprise her at work ; ) She was very surprised, to say the least. I embarrassed her by taking her picture next to her stand-up desk. To be honest, nobody in the office even noticed, but as a father, It's my job to embarrass my kids as often as possible.
I had a chance to meet her manager. He was gracious and told me what a great employee she is (tell me something I don't know). However, the greatest compliment he gave was asking for parental advice so that his kids could turn out as amazing as my daughter. I think the world of my kids, but it sure is nice when other people realize just how amazing they are.
I then drove over an hour south to San Jose. I checked into a hotel that was located adjacent to the San Jose Convention Center.
Since it was Veteran's Day, there was a parade happening on the streets right below my hotel. It was fun to watch the procession from above. Here's a bagpipe corps marching together:
I ran down the stairs to see a little more. I saw a number of ROTC cadets all marching together. It was really fun to see a group of young kids all dressed in uniform and working together.
The reason that I was in the Bay Area, was to attend my companies developer conference. This is a two-day event where we showcase some of the latest technology and prepare developers to create software for the next generation of computer hardware.
The big keynote sessions had speakers from all over the computer industry, talking about the latest advances in software and hardware. This included a noted game developer, as well as Sony showing the PlayStation 4 (our company made the chips inside that game console).
We had places for developers to try the new hardware and software, and we held smaller sessions where engineers were able to speak on a variety of topics.
These guys are trying some new virtual-reality goggles that are amazing...
While there, we invited industry press and analysts to see our products in action. I had the opportunity to conduct several interviews. I enjoyed an incredible dinner with members of the press. This is another reason that I enjoy business travel, as I get to have some amazing meals and amazing restaurants. Taking pictures of food with my phone can't really reproduce just how good it looks when it arrives at the table. This pork chop was fantastic…it was about as big as my face:
I had just a few bites of dessert. They delivered this chocolate cake that had caramel in the center. Yumm!
In another part of the conference, we decided to allow fans of my company come to play the latest PC games on high-end hardware. We had several hundred show up to play a game called BattleField 4, when you can have 64 players all playing simultaneously:
On the last day of the event, I had lunch with several industry analysts. We had some great discussions about where the industry is heading. At the end of the meal…yet another dessert was served. This was carrot cake - but it was the most unique presentation that I've ever seen:
I really wanted to eat the whole thing, but that would require a LOT of additional insulin ; )
Altogether, it was a good week in California. I was glad to get home and see my wife and little kids. Especially because I'm about to head out on another trip in just a few days. The fun never ends!
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