my WES expierance

Keep in mind, I'm not a very good writer.


For month’s I knew I would be going to WES. And honestly, I figured it was only a wireless conference. It won’t be a big deal. I will learn about some BlackBerry stuff. Then I read about the people from the support forums going too. I got excited and scared, either this is going to go really well, or no one is going to talk and we are just going to chat away on our BlackBerry’s.

I arrived at WES at around 2:00pm (my flight was delayed, we sat on the tarmac for two hours while they fixed something with the plane, then got on a new plane, it was a nightmare). I finally arrived at WES. I walked into my hotel room, threw down my bags and headed on down to the conference area. I meet up with my company’s rim contacts at the lounge and chatted about BES for awhile. Then I get really anxious and want to meet some people from the community. So I email Knottyrope, and after some confusion (ok seriously, he said I’m wearing a blue shirt, that is really the best you can do, there has to be 6000 people at this conference, and you tell me to meet you in the conference lobby, which is like a football stadium, and tell me you are wearing a blue shirt?) Finally after 6 or 7 emails I find Knottyrope and we chat for awhile. We decide to see what kind of trouble we can get into, so we wander down the hall to see Jsanders and bumblepie walking towards us.



I knew Jsanders from face book, but I had no idea bumblepie looked like. Right away my first fear of it being awkward was alleviated, and we began to chat away from the beginning. So we chat for a bit, we meet up with some people from blackberryforums.com and some boxtone people. Then I have to go set up my company’s booth at the solutions showcase. So I get in and set up our laptops and get the demo scripts ready, the solution showcase opens. The only way I can describe it is like black Friday at a Wal-mart. There were so many people coming in to check out the solutions. I took some time to walk around and check out what other people were doing. I was most impressed with Google and Zenprise. Google made a HUGE announcement with their BES connector. So after that, we went upstairs and we all hung out in the lounge for awhile. After a few drinks, I headed back to my room. I went to bed at about midnight because I wanted to be up early the next day.

The next day, after sitting at the booth for 8 hours, I wandered up to the support forums party and met the crew. When I first saw Krypto, my first thought was, “ Krypto looks like my little sister”. I honestly thought Krypto was a guy up until WES. But in my defense, it’s really hard to read what someone’s sex is from the technical forums. Then I saw a table that had enough empty liquor bottles to build a fort. I assumed this is where Andy was sitting. I walk over and say hello to Michelle and Greg again. They introduce me to the gang. Tanzim was on his BlackBerry for the first 10 minutes I met him, which is understandable, I’m the same way. So we start drinking, chatting, and making jokes. So I see jmrmb80, and I ask the question that everyone wants to know. What the heck does your name stand for. He explains it to me, but makes me promise if I tell anyone he can kill me. ( no seriously though, its just his name initials or something, I think. I was pretty intoxicated at that point. )



So after we leave the party, I head back to my room to do some work. I reboot a server, and then head down to see will.i.am. He put on a really good show. I found Andy, but I was not able to find anyone else. It was a pretty big room. So after I head upstairs to the boxtone lounge, where we really got to know each other. It was a really good time to just chat, and talk about the future of the support community. Unfortunately, I don’t remember anything about this conversation because I had enough liquor to kill a small herd of elephants. I think I told Michelle I didn’t like her at first, but I don’t really remember.



So enter Wednesday, and I am at the booth all day and in and out of sessions. I meet up with Andy Bumblepie and Jsanders and we walk around and chat for awhile. We agree to meet up at the ATT party later. So I hit some more sessions. Its around 6 o’clock and me and my boss decide to catch a cab over to the ATT party. We got the ATT party and they had fantastic finger foods. We watch Kenny Logins rock out. He played all the hits. Well, by all the hits, he played that song from top gun, and foot loose. After ATT I said goodbye to everyone as I was leaving the next day. I ended up saying goodbye and hello, because we kept ending up at the same place. So we all end up at Planet Hollywood, which was my favorite experience from WES. We just sat around and talked. We celebrated bumblepie’s 21st birthday. We got her a lot of shots, and as far as I know, she slept for the next 20 hours after that. So around 1am, I headed back to my hotel room WES was pretty much over for me. It was an amazing experience. It was much more then some techies getting together to talk about nerd stuff. It was people who shared a passion for technology and helping people, finding other people who felt the same way. It was refreshing. To all those that couldn’t make it, you were well represented and spoken about.