Intel Solutions Summit 2012 in New Orleans

Intel Solutions Summit 2012 in New Orleans

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for March 25, 2012

Dr. Bollig and I headed to New Orleans this week to enjoy beautiful views of the Super Dome.

We spent three nights across the street from the Superdome at the newly re-opened Hyatt Regency which just went through renovations costing approximately $300 million dollars.  The place was beautiful, but had these new fangled elevators with no buttons that confused the hell out of everyone!  For $300 million, I'd think they could have just hired people to carry us to our rooms instead.

The reason we went down to Louisiana was to attend the 2012 Intel Solutions Summit.  We had the opportunity to learn about all the incredibly cool new products Intel is bringing to market this year including a whole new series of servers, desktop processors, and a new class of mobile computers called Ultra Books!  I would have loved to show you more images of these products, but for some reason Intel kept announcing that photos weren't allowed to be taken during the sessions.  It's almost like they have something against me...

We had a great time with some of our old friends from Intel as well as some of their other customers.  

We also connected with some of our good vendors like Bethany from Source Support.  She joined us as we feasted on some of the local cuisine like jambalaya and craw fish.  

I've never been very good with food that stares back at me while I'm trying to eat it.

Most of the time we were there was spent learning and working, but we did make it down to Bourbon Street on Tuesday night which was quite a bit of fun.  There's some interesting characters that hang around down there.

  

This guy had set up shop outside of one of the bars and was a wealth of knowledge about the local scene.  He also sold twisted forks which we didn't buy.  Now if he would have only had some twisted spoons, I just may have been a customer!

The local music scene was empowering.  If only they would have invited me onstage to jam along with them, then the night would have been perfect!

On the final night, after the awards ceremony, they had a big party which featured 5 local bands there to jazz us up with excitement!

I have to be honest with you, though.  After the second or third jazz band, they all started sounding the same to me.  My feet really start desiring some hip hop music, but it never came.  Isn't Lil Wayne from New Orleans?  I wish he would have been in one of the bands.

This is a video that Intel showed on the final night at the Awards Ceremony.  I'm in it a couple of times, but for some reason they identify me as Dr. Bollig!