I’ve just arrived back in Seattle after my trip to the San Francisco area. Although I don’t generally blog about the who, what and where of all my business meetings (different company, different culture), I can mention that today I visited the A9 team in Palo Alto. They asked me to speak at their weekly all-hands, and so I took the opportunity to go over some strategic material from a recent presentation in Seattle. I’m not sure if they’d had an opportunity to see the video of the earlier talk, but as we all know a video is a poor substitute for a live presenter who can be questioned “in real time”. I think it was useful and (hopefully) provocative.
While I was at A9, I ran into my former Sun colleague Claire Giordano. It was the first time we’d talked since just before I joined Amazon, when I was quizzing her about the difference between the Sun and Amazon cultures. But there wasn’t much time to chat; the schedule was full, and it was only fear of the inevitable traffic jam on 101 between Palo Alto and SFO that brought proceedings to a close. We got to the airport, went through the ritual – turn in the car, check in, check through, eat, wait and board – and I fell asleep until I heard ATC on channel 9 directing our flight to “turn right to one three oh and join the localizer for runway one six centre; caution wake turbulence, you’re following a Boeing 757”.
And rather than waiting for the bus, I got a lift from my colleague Colin (thanks!), so that I was home by 11:40pm.