Full circle at SAPPHIRE

Sometimes you just have to sit back and marvel at how far we’ve come with technology.  I just got back from SAP’s SAPPHIRE/ASUG conference in Orlando and this is one of those moments.

Picture this.

SAP rents out the Amway center for a private Santana concert.  They bus thousands of badge wearing attendees, exhibitors, presenters and employees to a totally open house with free food and refreshments.  Gates opened at 8 and Santana was scheduled to perform from 9 to 10:30.  In between 8 and 9, aside from the obligatory exercising of the sound system with “mood tunes”, entertainment was centered around two HUGE Jumbotron screens that doubled as larger than life bookends for the main stage.

The maestro of the Jumbotron was alternately displaying trivia questions that got the crowds competitive juices flowing and live #SAPPHIRENOW and/or #SANTANA Tweets that taunted tweeters to claim their “15 minutes of fame”.

I took the tweet bait.

Since I knew my friend Barry Brunetto of Blount, Inc was somewhere in the arena…no doubt far far away from the cheap seats that my “attendee” pass entitled me to…I decided to see if he was a Jumbotron viewer.

Out came my trusty Blackberry, I fired up Ubertwitter and typed in my less than 140 character message designed to get b2b2dot0 displayed in two story high font.  Within seconds…from my phone, to the local cell tower, probably up to a satellite or two, back down from the cloud to our Jumbotron Maestro’s laptop and up on to the Jumbotrons came MY TWEET!  OMG!

Everyone around me instantly knew that I was a star…at least for an Andy Warhol moment.  In fact, the woman seated next to me commented that what I had just accomplished was a far cry from the Bic lighter she sported the last time she saw Santana back when she was in college.  No kidding!

What remained was to see if I accomplished my goal.  Did Barry actually see my tweet?  Was he a Jumbtron devotee?  Thirty seconds later my Blackberry gave me my “you’ve got mail” vibratory tap on the shoulder.  I was so excited to read the following email from Barry:

So that’s it.  That was my “marvel at technology” moment.  Two people in the same 10,000 person arena, staring at the same Jumbotron monitors are tied together by Blackberries, satellites, the Internet, Twitter and a friendship spawned by synchronicity.

It’s a wonderful time to be alive!

Sam

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