I am not sure what happened to Spring, but as Orlando enjoys temperatures in the mid-90s, one could say summer is already here.

I am in Central Florida this week to attend the 50^th Anniversary COMMON annual meeting and exposition, hosted at the Orlando Marriott resort. This is my first time touching down in Florida, and I have not been disappointed. Although I do not have the complexion to ever consider becoming a “sun worshipper,” there is an immediate recognition of why this state attracts thousands of visitors from around the world: Clean streets, pristine buildings, and endless entertainment and activities for people of every age. I arrived a couple of days early and drove over to Cocoa Beach, and then down to West Palm Beach to visit my “brother” from my time as a foreign exchange student. It was wonderful to reconnect with him after a couple of years.

The conference started on Sunday with the normal pre-meeting lab sessions, and then formally commenced on Monday after with a large opening session hosted by COMMON president Wayne Madden, and keynote speaker Ross Mauri, General Manager of IBM Power Systems.

The exposition has been very busy for all of the Help/Systems’ family of companies, significantly up from the event last year in Reno. With a COMMON call for more participation from its members, hopefully this is something that continues to rebuild and increase. It has been a pleasure to visit with existing and prospective customers alike. It seems security is still very much on the minds of the attendees, with interest from every industry and every size organization within those industries.

We have been signing up large numbers of attendees who are interested in winning the beautiful Gateway netbook, and have been handing out logo t-shirts from SEQUEL, Help/Systems, and of course, PowerTech by the box.

Well, I have to run as the expo is about to begin again. Based on the last couple of days, we will need every resource available on the expo floor; a great problem to have!

If you were not able to attend this year’s meeting, I hope to see you all at next year’s event in Help/Systems’ hometown of Minneapolis, MN, from May 1 through 4.

Have a wonderful week!

- rt

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Company News, Other, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.