TechFieldDay Boston – Brilliant!

As you probably all know, at the start of the month I was invited over to Boston to take part in the 2nd ever GestaltIT TechFieldDay. For those of you who didn’t know, or who aren’t sure what the TechFieldDays are about, first read my earlier blog and then read below to find out how I got on.

TechFieldDay Deletgates

Above is a great photo with most of the delegates including myself taken across the harbour from the main Boston centre. The photo was taken on the Saturday after the two days, so there are a couple of people missing. We look like a right Motley Crew, but in all honesty, every single one of my fellow delegates were brilliant. All completely unique and all soo passionate about technology. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to meet them all.

The TechFieldDay Sponsors

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Through-out the two densely packed TechFieldDays we got to visit and meet with IT Vendors both big and small. We got to see their products, future products and visions for the future. I’m not going to go into the specifics of each presentation in this post, I will post links at the bottom to posts written by myself and the other delegates. The vendor presentations were set out like this:

Thursday – Data Robotics – VKernel –EMC

Friday – HP – Cisco

Each sponsor had a limited amount of time to present to us due to the amount of miles we had to cover to get to the venues. Upon arrival, the delegates would setup the massive amount of gadgets that comes in the bloggers toolkit (See Photo). The sponsor would then give us a presentation. We would then discuss the presentation with the sponsor and once we had finished, the sponsors would leave the room whilst we discussed the presentation between ourselves in a Roundtable type format. All of the roundtables were recorded and are becoming available on the GestaltIT Website and via iTunes.

Between the sponsor presentations we were chauffeured around in a large mini-bus with gave as a great chance to relax, digest and chat to each other about what we had just seen. And if we didn’t fancy that, there were plenty of new Apple iPads on the bus to pass the time with. 

Out of hours socialising

On Thursday evening we were treated to a tour of the famous Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. This was a first for me, as I’d never really seen a Baseball match, let alone had a guide tour of the stadium. After the tour we were treated to food and drink at the stadium by a company called Akorri. It was a great way to let down our proverbial hair after a long intense day.

4505458356_b6129e5085_oOn Friday evening we all congregated in a Pub/Restaurant to have a lovely meal and then a few drinks back at the hotel to mark the end of another successful TechFieldDay.

Before I booked my flights to Boston I had the chance to stay another night, which would give me Saturday to see some of Boston. There were a few of who decided to do this, and a couple of the delegates were either from Boston, or knew the Boston area, so we had some great tour guides to show us what Boston had to offer. (Nick Weaver from EMC joined us on Saturday evening…He was NOT a great tour guide!!! But we had fun none the less.) I’m really glad I decided to stay an extra day, as Boston is a really great city and I would love to return there at some point in the future.

Summary

All I can say is; If you get the chance to participate in a TechFieldDay, grab it with both hands. I had such an amazing experience and I’m not just saying that because I would love to be invited again for a future event, I really did! I didn’t expect it to be how it was. To be fair, I didn’t know what I expected. But being able to meet and get to know all of the other great delegates, being able to visit some really really great companies, being able to learn almost every minute of the day was something I will never be able to do again. To me this experience was invaluable.

So as I final note, I’d like to thank Stephen Foskett and Clair for making this happen and allowing me to be a part of it.

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