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0 I got up at 5 o’clock (CET) in the morning on Saturday and made my way to Schiphol airport, so Gerwin and I could take our plane to Dallas, Texas. After 8, 9 hours, we arrived at Bush International in Houston, Texas. Due to the new customs regulations and only 1 hour interval between flights, we missed the next Continental Airlines Expressjet flight to Love airport Dallas, but all went well and we were able to get the next flight to Dallas at 4 pm. From Dallas "Love" airport we got a taxi to the very nice Omni Mandalay Hotel at Las Colinas, were the Hotsos event, the following days, will be held.
Sunday 04/03/2007
After a good, restful night, Gerwin and I, took a small stroll, by foot, in Las Colinas. I don’t know how to exactly describe a place like "Las Colinas", at least in one word. Las Colinas is a area completely designated / optimized for business, business and again business.
Everything needed for optimum working has been build in this area. Great and nice business offices to work and to proper present your company. Small health centers, like dentist services, to provide care for small emergencies. Fitness centers and spa facilities, to support optimum employer / employee workout spaces. Living conduits / apartments and area’s for the better situated people to have a place, very, very near to his or her workplace… Restaurants (Texas grill, Japanese or, for instance, Italian food), small shops to provide the primary needs for living. Hotels to invite guests and provide the business with extra facilities for seminars and presentations.
Infrastructure has been very carefully planned. For instance, an awful lot of parking space has been build, sometimes near or under the office building, sometimes build between the conduits / apartments. There is even a small train, maybe metro, railway that connects (at least it looks that way) all the bigger business buildings…
This afternoon we have to register (6 pm.) for the event. We already sighted Anjo Kolk and had some small conversations. While writing this post (~3 pm.) some small SIG Hotsos meetings(database and Hotsos software) have already started. Gerwin and I decided to skip these and do some work; Gerwin has some unfinished work regarding an AMIS business opportunity and I am working on this post :-).
Maybe we will visit downtown Dallas tonight (14 miles from our current position!; looking at some skyscrapers), probably one of our only chances to see something of Dallas during the Hotsos event. Keep you posted!. In the meanwhile, presenting some nice pictures of Las Colinas…
…at least that was the plan…
…and at the end we didn’t…
Invited by one of our hosts Cary Millsap and introduced via Anjo Kolk, we ended up having a late dinner with the people mentioned and, among others, Mr. Ken Jacobs. We enjoyed a last drink in hotel room with other performance people / buffs, talking performance, which can be summed up by: "Don’t trust authorities; Use your brain cells; Don’t trust all the PR pooha, just check it, yourself if it fits your needs and stick to it".
So, nothing new here.
Intermezzo with some images
Keep in mind, all pictures were take within a 1 mile radius !
Enjoy the conference as well as the sights! 😉
Keep up the good work, Marco – I don’t have camera cables with me!
The elevated railway made me curious too – it appeared to be abandoned. Did a quick google to find this info..
http://web.presby.edu/~jtbell/transit/Irving/
However, the real estate market in the Dallas area suffered a major downturn in the late 1980s. Development of the Las Colinas Urban Center slowed, and there has been no need to extend the APT system beyond its initial 1.5-mile segment. Ridership was so low and financial problems became so severe that the system shut down completely from July 1993 to December 1996.
Since its re-opening, the APT has operated only from 10:30 am to 2:00 pm on weekdays, with two cars, one for each route. Operation is now completely manual, with cars running on demand. An operator in each car uses controls intended for emergency or maintainance use, that are normally hidden behind a panel in the seats. A third employee in the former automated control center monitors video cameras in the stations and notifies the car operators via hand-held radios when passengers arrive.