Posts Tagged ‘Germany’

The “day” really started at some point during the flight, as I arrive at Frankfurt airport at about seven in the morning. I find my way to the front of the taxi stand, am greeted with a gruff “Morgen”, by the taxi driver, and subsequently take off at breakneck speed for nearby Raunheim where the NS Frankfurt Rhein hotel is located, which is also where the conference is being held. Once there, I check in, make my way to the room and immediately have a shower. Once changed I manage to take stock of my new surroundings: the room is somewhat Spartan but functional. The bath tub I take the shower in a narrow and small, the duvet on the bed is not quite 6ft long, so I will need to sleep at an angle onto the other double bed so that my feet don’t stick out in the open, and the swank-looking leather chair is in fact too low to the ground to be either relaxing or useful. Okay, I might seem to be grumbling here, and in the end it was comfy enough for my needs. The view from the window looks into the inner courtyard of the hotel, and trains occasionally whiz at high speed in the near distance. Still somewhat wired, I settle in and end up watching the British-produced version of CNN until the keynote speaker launches the conference just after 9am.

My Room at the Frankfurt Hotel

A few minutes before the start of the conference I make my way down to the reception area, sign in and get my speaker’s tag and the thick book containing all of the conference proceedings. In the conference room I immediately see my colleague Graydon S., and soon after I am flanked by France B. who is also there as a co-presenter at our presentation, as well as another one she is giving by herself. The room rapidly fills up, and soon somewhere over a hundred people are filling the conference space. This conference is much small in terms of attendance than the last one I attended in

JoAnn Hackos launching the DITA Europe 2006 Conference

First JoAnn Hackos stepped up and welcomed everybody to the conference, and gave a brief speech on how DITA has progressed and seen greater adoption. She also remarked on the number of people in attendance (might have to hold it in a different venue next time, since we collectively just about filled the available conference space), and how far afield some of them came from – there was at least one fellow from Australia, and someone from China in attendance as well as people from all over the European Union and North America. She also talked briefly on the relatively rapid uptake of DITA in the industry and expressed personal interest in several of the talks to come over the next couple of days.

Michael Priestly Gives the Keynote Address at DITA Europe 2006

Then Michael Priestly from IBM came up and delivered the keynote presentation, entitled “DITA Evolves“. He was one of the original people responsible for drafting the 1.0 specification, and works out of the Toronto IBM lab. I note that he is dressed in a tie – which might seem typical for an IBM representative but is in fact the first time I have seen him in decidedly non-geek attire over the several times I have run into him. He talked about its current capabilities, how it has been adapted to suit many different uses that were not originally envisioned, and how the upcoming 1.1 specification will include better books, be more extensible, will handle automatic image scaling and better translation support.

His talk was solid and interesting, but I found that during his presentation my lack of sleep was catching up with me, despite knocking back a coke for a shot of caffeine prior to keynote. I made my excuses at the end of the talk, headed back to my room, and crashed out for a few hours.

I woke up a few hours later, having unfortunately missed lunch and a few presentations in the process. I ended up seeing two further presentations that day: “Moving to DITA – An Engineering Case Study” and “Best Practice for Global Industry: DITA as a Competitive and Strategic Advantage”. Both presentations were good, but neither of them told me anything much that I didn’t already know, having already been working with DITA professionally for some time now.

Before I knew it was time for dinner, and there was a group heading to the nearby Corner Steak House. Their specialty was servings of various types of steak cuts served up sizzling on a slab of hot lava rock. So about forty of us descended on the place, with the intention of talking about semiconductor specializations for DITA while we waited for our meal. With forty of us there, we ended up waiting a long time; it was a full half hour before our beer orders were filled, and well over an hour before we got our particular pieces of sizzling steak (mine was the spicy hot pot variety, which was excellent, though by the time I got it I was ravenous). Met some interesting contacts both in the semiconductor business as well as a couple of the organizers for the conference.

The Corner Steak House, Frankfurt (Picture Taken the Following Day)

Waiting for the Food at the Corner Steakhouse (with Michael Priestley, sans Tie and Suit, at the Head of the Table)

At dinner’s conclusion I headed back to the hotel and gratefully went to bed for a full night’s sleep.

We arrived at Frankfurt without incident, and after discovering that the gate for our flight to Nice had yet to be posted, we all found a convenient waiting area (gate A26) that was little used and basically camped out there for the several hours we had to wait between flights. The dogs were walked, the girls played with their toys, we all got to stretch our legs, and I picked up instant energy by buying a package of Toblerone chocolates from the nearest duty free shop to us. When pedestrian traffic was light I played with the girls on the “people movers” as well as on some nearby escalators. Everybody (save me) managed to get a nap in as well.

About an hour before our flight was to leave our flight to Nice was finally posted, so Jennifer and I roused everyone else up so that we could make our way to the correct gate for our flight.

The second flight of our trip was on a smaller, more comfortable plane that provided significantly more leg-room for the likes of me.

Erika and the girls napped for much of the flight, while I got to see the tops of the snow-covered alps far below. I noticed that further south we went, the less-snowy the countryside, until it was only to be seen on the tops of the higher mountains. The trip to Nice airport was just about an hour long, so it was a short, pleasant flight.

Despite the palm trees that could be seen dotted around the perimeter of Nice airport when we landed, the temperature was not much warmer than what we had left at home: about 13C.

We retrieved our bags, and then had to wait in line for ages for the rental car that had been pre-arranged for at the Hertz counter. For the record I made note of the other car rental services available at Nice airport, and they are: Sixit, ADA, Thrifty, Budget, Europcar and Avis. Avoid Hertz, and aim for one of these other agencies instead, who could apparently deal with their customers in a *much* more efficient manner than the single attendant at the Hertz desk. Good case in point: she called twice to ensure that the child seat that we had ordered was in fact there, and then, when we got there, Erika had to ask for it again and then I had to install it. Ugh — never again. And this was on top of at least one other call regarding the vehicle itself (which, for the record, was a roomy Peugeot mini-van). This also meant another ride, this time to the other terminal by bus, so there was another round of unloading and loading our baggage again. After having waited the better part of an hour waiting and then dealing with the Hertz representative, we finally got everybody, the luggage and the dogs piled into the rental mini-van, and headed off for the last leg of the trip to the estate near Ramatuelle.

Both girls slept again, which meant that for the first time, neither of them had been sick for any part of the long journey.

When we arrived we were greeted warmly by our hosts, and then we lugged ourselves and our baggage upstairs. We were shown rooms in the west wing, with individual rooms for Vanessa and Annie, as well as one for Erika and myself, so we essentially had an entire wing of the building to ourselves.

Since I was the only one of the group who hadn’t had any sleep over the course of the trip, after helping to sort things out I gratefully hit the hay and conked out for the night.