by Tim Mangan, CTP, Boston CUGC Leader
Wondering what a day is like for a CTP at Synergy? Here’s mine.
6:45 An early start to the day, but hardly the start of my week at Synergy. That really started on Sunday when the CTPs had two days of meetings with the Engineers and Mark T. Who schedules a meeting on Mother’s Day at 8AM?
Like many of you, I grabbed my badge and X1 mouse (thank goodness I don’t have to drag two backpacks around today!) and some coffee and met for the pre-seating for bloggers. This involves standing around in a dark room before being led into our seating section. But it’s worth it to get power and internet, because let’s face it — the keynotes do run on. But while waiting I had an opportunity to connect up with a few other folks in their holding tanks waiting to get in also. During the keynote I’m mostly tweeting to add context to the announcements of the keynote.
After the keynote it was a quick walk over to the new Citrix User Group Community booth on the show floor. So while you were getting lunch, I was prepping for the first of my presentations at the booth to help folks start up their own local user group. The show floor is such a great place to catch up with friends. But I’m also looking out for new vendors in the space as well as new things being done by the familiar. My interests are both to understand what’s going on so as to be better informed for when I talk to enterprises, but also since I run a local User Group I am always looking to make contact with folks to get them to come and sponsor a local meeting.
Along the way I run into an old customer that tells me he is looking for some additional help on a project and did we have any capacity. Unfortunately, my only resource (Patrick) is tied up for the next 6 weeks, but then I remember my partner up in Canada who has a few available guys due to the depressed oil/gas industry up there. A few email exchanges and I get them connected.
Much of my day, however was interrupted by software. I’m busy planning a demo for the Geek Speak tonight event on Wednesday and it was a mad rush of getting new software builds and fighting issues with getting Octoblu connection into my demo setup. It wouldn’t be so bad, except that my hotel room doesn’t have a physical internet drop. I came prepared with my own wireless router, switch, cables, and 5 computers that I need. (Oddly, it was the roll of gaffer’s tape that did me in at airport security on the way out here). Getting new build from the Maximumbits guys was a godsend, along with the new version of the connector to work with it from the Citrix team.
With success on the new build, it was back to the show for the official celebration for the launch of CUGC, and then off to dinner with another old customer. Then while many of you were partying, it was back to the hotel for me to test the stability of that new build, as it’s always nice to make sure things don’t go boom during your demo.
