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From Photos posted on Whova For as long as I can remember participation in NonStop focused events has been the highlight of the year! I have had the good fortune to travel to events worldwide, from Europe to Asia and even to Australia. The opportunity to simply catch up with former colleagues and newfound friends has made any inconvenience experienced on the day a moot point. Then again, my enthusiasm for customer-focused events can be traced back to 1979 when I attended my first global gathering of the EDOS community. As an Australian working in the early days of IT, making plans for any overseas trip was always a mixture of angst and longing, given how the price of the airline ticket to almost anywhere on the planet was exorbitant. The companies I worked for wanted to maximize any perceived value on offer, so at the time before I joined Tandem Computers in 1988, these trips to international events seemed to always total something like six weeks. Many telexes and faxes were involved a...

Travel provides considerable insight. It never ceases to amaze me how many unexpected events occur on any given trip out into the wild blue yonder. Travel has provided the stimulus for many posts to this blog and to other blogs I support, but in reality, the connection between travel and inspiration is not only tangible, it is something every blogger simply has to do. Forget looking at the tea leaves, take the time to find the best tea house and absorb everything around you. Fair enough; travel is pretty much off the table for now. Not surprisingly, the concerns over the continuing presence of highly contagious strains of COVID have made it almost certain that this global pandemic is going to be with us for some time. And yet for many Americans, depending on which state you live in, there is a growing sense that almost normal has returned. Last night Margo and I were kept awake by a thunderstorm that lit up the sky. Rain finally fell closer to midnight but what it reminded us both ...