Rittman Mead - Delivered Intelligence

I’m just packing up my stuff now, about to leave the Sydney Harbour Marriott and fly over to Auckland later on today. Like Melbourne, Sydney went really well, a really nice audience, good turnout (25) and a good venue. It’s been really nice doing the seminars over here - for most people, BIEE is fairly new, so there’s a good level of interest and people are keen to hear about architecture, how development works and so on - and the Aussies, coupled with the suprisingly high number of Brits that are over here, are really nice to work with (and go out for a few beers with, afterwards). A really pleasurable two days.

I landed in Sydney around 2pm on Tuesday, and had a couple of hours free in the afternoon to take a wander around and see a bit of the sights. Janet and I were in Sydney around seven years ago, we stayed in the Grace Hotel down York Street for a couple of nights, then moved to a Youth Hostel (which was our original plan, we were going backpacking), then cancelled the youth hostel and moved back into a hotel for the next week, I think by then we were a bit too old for communal showers and parties in bedrooms at 3am in the morning… This time around, I took a look around the CBD, went down by the old town hall, took a walk over to Darling Harbour, went on the monorail and then up Sydney Tower.

I’ve got to say, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating here, that Sydney has got to be one of the most amazing, wonderful places I’ve been to. If you live over here, you’re so lucky; Sydney Harbour is just amazing, you’ve got the bridge, the Opera House, an amazing city, good weather, the people are nice, it’s just fantastic. I’d say that Sydney and San Francisco are the two favourite places I’ve been to, after that I’d place London, and it’s a real priviledge, I’m really lucky, to be able to come over here and do this sort of thing. It makes all the evenings and weekend spent working on the seminar material seem worthwhile. Not bad.

Anyway, apart from the seminar, I met up with Andy Todd on the first night for a few beers, got a bit further with the Hyperion stuff in the evenings, and started work on the new column I’m doing for the ODTUG magazine. For now though, it’s bags packed and off to the hotel, for my final two days in Auckland, New Zealand.

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