I've been traveling for years and I had various adventures but I have never done this. I guess there is always a first.

As I said in my previous post, I came to Orlando for MGX and one of Craig Mundie's demo, which I think went really well. I woke up this morning, after having got some rest from the panic of the previous days,and checked out at around 11.10am. I don’t really like Orlando so I didn’t have anything to do. Instead of wondering around, I decided to go to the airport. I was there at around 11.30am and checked in directly for my 6.30pm flight. That’s 7 hours before the flight's departure!!!! I went to the gate and plugged my laptop to the power so I could work while waiting.

I started working on a chapter of the book that Jim, Ian, and I are writing and then moved on to clean up my email. I got so into the groove of working that completely lost track of time. Somehow I thought my flight was at 6.50 so at 6.30 I went to ask if there was a delay because I wasn’t seeing any action. Their response… “oh, are you at 6A? We paged you. The flight is gone. You missed it.” Indeed, they had just closed the airplane’s doors and I could see my "ride" back to Seattle leaving :-(

I was only few meters away and I still didn't realize what was happening. I guess it didn’t help that I had my back to the gate while looking at my laptop's screen.

I will have to cancel lots of meetings for tomorrow now :-(

This is turned out to be one of those days. Oh man!

I am in Orlando for Microsoft's MGX event. I am here to make sure everything goes well with one of the demos in Craig Mundie's keynote speech. I have been managing the development of the prototype and the interactions with Prof. Jeff Lichtman and Dr. Bobby Kasthuri from Harvard. The prototyping team in Microsoft has done a fantastic job at building a 3D visualization tool for the huge amounts of data collected from scanning mouse brain slices. The Connectome project is really fascinating.

The entire experience here is surreal. The scale of operations to prepare an event full of keynotes from the top Microsoft executives, in front of 15,000 Microsoft employees (sales and marketing force), is just amazing. We had our rehearsal today and I am really looking forward to the actual event tomorrow. Being backstage is really cool as I get to see folks like Craig Mundie and Ray Ozzie (tomorrow).

Oh, I met Blaise Aguera y Arcas today (of Seadragon and TED Photosynth presentation fame). Great guy.

This is about open access to publicly funded research. Not that my opinion has the weight of these Nobel Prize winners but I am agreeing nevertheless :-)

I had already mentioned I was in Glastonbury (panoramas) and then stayed in the UK for few days for work-related meetings (e.g. Nature visit). After the UK I went to Greece for few days of holidays. I saw my family and relaxed a lot; truly felt that my batteries were fully recharged. Here are a couple of panoramas of the place where I spent the last 3 days in Greece before coming back.

I flew straight to Illinois (via London and Chicago) to visit UIUC. Then to Boston (again via Chicago) to visit MIT. These visits where part of an Microsoft-Intel joint program I am managing on behalf of Microsoft around the Manycore space. I can't provide more details at this stage but will be able to do so soon, after the university visits are over (last day of July).

What I didn't know about flying via Chicago in July was that there are frequent storms and, as a result, huge delays. The flights were a loooooong adventure. Since I was the one who suggested the itinerary, I felt really bad for the entire group. I was very lucky, however, to be with 12 good-humored and very relaxed people. We had a good time, albeit very little sleep over those days because we were waiting at airports. And to give you an idea of the people who were in the group... Tony Hey (MS Corporate Vice President), Andrew Chien (Intel Vice President), Burton Smith (MS Technical Fellow), Mike Fortin (MS Distinguished Engineer), Jim Larus, Jim Held, Jesse Fang, Wei Li, etc. etc. All top executive and technical folks. Then we had the legal and management teams, including my friend Mohamed Arafa from Intel with whom I've had an excellent collaboration so far.

Anyway... the visits went well and I was back in time for Tony and I to go straight for a two-day team offsite (more meetings). Today (Saturday) is my first day in Seattle after more than 3 weeks. I enjoyed the sun and the festival at the International District and I am on my way to the Mariners vs Detroit game (another team event), which I am going to watch from Microsoft's suite at the Safeco field :-)