Inside ASI-AP

Sept 10 – 16, 2007
Location - Alexandria VA USA

I will be in the US offices for 4 weeks until Oct 6. So the blog is started again!

Monday I started the long trip to the east coast of USA. Started at 10.20 am Melbourne time and finally got to sleep at 1.15am Tuesday Alexandria time (3.15pm Tuesday Melbourne time).

The flight was my first opportunity to really try out my new noise cancelling headphones. Well I don’t think you realise how noisy a 747 is until you put on these type of headphones. I think they cut out about 70-80% of the noise, but you can still hear a hum of the a/c or engines. It definitely helped in not having to have the volume of the movies up so loud.

Flight was uneventful – but I did sit next to a man (Graham) who is a director of ParaQuad Vic - it is a small world. We chatted about some common not-for-profit issues. He was coming to the US to inspect a printer for the business he manages. Once in LA I had to spend about 7 hours in LAX waiting for my next flight. Mind-numbing time but I tried to do some work. I took a picture of a well known icon of LAX - it seems to be getting a face-lift, in a box-like transition.

Tuesday was the monthly RM Sales meeting. Each of the RMs presented the opportunities/pipelines for their region, and expectations for sales closing this quarter and by the end of the year. This is the reason that we have to keep our opportunities up to date. David Riffle attended by Video Conference to do his presentation – it was 5.30 am his time. Marketing, Product Marketing and Consulting were also represented.

The rest of the week was catching up with staff and some discussions about iMIS 15 with Bob/John and RMs.

Socially the week was pretty active. I caught up with Marty Rabenovets and Tim Counts for dinner on Tuesday, and John and Bob for lunch on Wednesday and then dinner with Carol Behm on Wednesday night.

The weekend was the first time for me to get on a bike since June. Saturday I rode about 8-10 km to a few shops for a browse. First was Best Buy to look at technology and gadgets. Nothing purchased - then to Pentagon City for general shopping. Here I went to the Apple Store and spent about 30 mins looking at the iPhone. I have to say – I was not that impressed. I am not going to drop my Nokia for it. It is cute, has a good interface, but is lacking features I already have on my current phone (3G, VOIP, Surf by Wifi only, MMS, …). I even sent text messages to people in Australia – since it was a live phone! But it wouldn't let me send pictures. I tried to look at the new iPod Touch – but the store only had one (1) and it was a line up to see it. I figured I already had seen the phone version of the same thing.

Spent some time in other shops buying some new clothes and then rode home. I was using my GPS (on my phone) to navigate me to the shops via the roads – rather than taking the bike trail. It was pretty cool to have the GPS on my shoulder and the phone in my pocket telling me to turn left, turn right etc.

Sunday was a lung cancer charity walk in DC – sponsored by ASI for staff to walk. This was in consideration of Carol Behm. I rode to DC (near the White House) to start the walk at 8am. I am not a morning person so this was a little early for me to do a 40 min ride – then a 30 min slow walk with about 10 ASI staff – then I toured around DC a bit more. I visited the Jefferson Monument as I had not been in there since 1994. It is always interesting to read the history of these people, but it normally makes me realise I need to read and learn more about Aussie history too! After the 40 min ride home, I was ready for a nap after lunch. I was blaming jet-lag! Good sleep before starting week 2.