- Alarm on the phone goes off – somehow it sounds 100x louder than it did yesterday
7:15
- Knock on the door. This is getting to be a bad habit.
- Robinson: “Meet me downstairs” Me: “uh, no. I’ll see you at the conference hall”
- Seems I borrowed some of today’s fun for last night. This isn’t going to be a fun day.
7:45
- Groggy and showered I step out into Alexanderplatz looking for the one breakfast I know my body will appreciate when feeling like this.
7:50
- Huh? The McDonald’s in the train station doesn’t serve breakfast.
- Lady behind the counter gives me directions to the other McD’s. In German.
8:00
- Visualizing her hand signals I’m now heading away from the conference – hoping the McD’s is close (and I understood her gestures).
8:05
- Success! Thank god for big signs. I can see the restaurant way down the block.
8:10
- Walk-in, don’t even look at the menu – “Sausage & Egg McMuffin”
- “Sorry, we don’t have it”
- ????? this is getting worse…
- “We have bacon”
- Sure. (I think)
8:15
- Kitchen is slow but I’ve got my food and decide to eat on the run.
8:20
- Oops. Got myself turned around and went the wrong way. Again.
- Decide to crack open breakfast. Bacon on top of scrambled eggs with bun on the side.
8:22
- This is really bad.
8:23
- Found a garbage can. Hope the conference has good food this AM.
8:30
- Made it just in time for Jaap’s interview of SDL’s CEO, Mark Lancaster.
- (Common Sense Advisory did a great write up here)
9:30
- Lancaster interview over. Some interesting topics covered (and not covered)
- Time for booth duty :/
9:30 – 12:30
- Neither Robinson or I have even had time to catch our breath. One person after another is in the booth. A couple of BIG conversations have us stoked – crossed off a couple of big goals for the show.
12:30
- Lunch. I’m starving
- Find a seat with Richard Sikes and later joined by Bob from McElroy.
- Bob’s a great guy and enjoying his insights on the industry as he also comes from a software background
13:00
- Relieving Robinson – my turn in the booth.
- These lights (booth lights) are killing me.
- One of them has the most subtle of flickers but today it’s having the same effect on me as a strobe light on a ship in rough waters.
14:00
- Show is starting to slow a bit. Lots of people with luggage milling about and the exodus is clearly starting.
- Stephen & Amy from GALA just came around – trying to get the prize drawing sorted out. Stephen is concerned about it dragging as there are 20+ companies giving something away this time.
15:30
- Robinson’s other half, Sheena, should have arrived by now – he’s ducked back to the hotel to check and I’m packing up the booth.
- Rented booths are great. “Packing” consists of throwing all our brochures back in the suitcase which we’ve perfected packing to within a few grams of the airline’s weight limit.
- Technically the floor is still open so I leave a few brochures out but this puppy is unofficially over.
16:00
Up in the hall for the closing session.- Missed the topic description but it seems to be about highs and lows of owning an LSP.
16:15
- Arturo (Moravia) and Hans (Architext/Translations.com) are cracking me up – both seem like fun guys.
16:45
- Session over – let the drawings begin!
17:00
- Some interesting prizes coming through:
- A Marionette
- An Authentic Italian Leather Bag (Made in Poland)
- Wooden carving of a bird – should be fun to try and pack that. (Our partner Joe from Translated.net won that)
- Another leather bag
- Only two iPods – clearly the fad is dying…
17:30
- Drawings done, conference done.
- Saddest part of coming out of the last session is walking back into the show floor – by the time we get out the exhibition floor is mostly torn down, in a matter of hours you’ll never even know any of us were there.
18:00
- Back at hotel – agree to meet up at 18:30 for dinner w/Robinson & Sheena – the third wheel portion of my trip is about to begin.
18:20
- Sitting in the middle of Alexanderplatz with my laptop, hoping to scam some free wifi.
- No dice – but I do find a cheaper hotspot.
- Call home via Skype & my trusty USB phone (getting some funny looks form people as I talk into my mouse)
18:45
- Meet up with Robinson and a very tired Sheena
- We head off in the same direction as the Thai place the other night – there was an Indian place that looked good and I want to try it out.
19:30
- Finally get to the Indian place. Sticking to water tonight.
19:45
- Finally get our food – appetizers are great. Main courses have no spice to them at all.
- Food is good but we could have done with some kick, dishes are bordering on sweet!
- All of us are fighting to stay awake – might be an early night.
20:45
- Starting the walk back – trying to figure out what the mom & child signs mean…
21:00
- Hackesher Markt is a great district to walk through. Lots of life & restaurants. There’s a beautiful train station here as well but if it weren’t for the trains you’d never know it was there.
- Each of the restaurants are built underneath the station itself so it just looks like a façade for the line of restaurants.
21:30
- After dawdling back we’re at the hotel and calling it a night.
- Cleaning up my photos for the day and trying to upload them to Flickr. This net connection sucks.
22:00
- Watch some TV on my laptop (Always travel with a few shows downloaded to it) – don’t even get through one.
- Zzzz….
All of my photos from Day Four
