SAFUN

This is the 2nd year PEER 1 has exhibited at the SXSW Interactive trade show.

The SXSW Interactive Festival features five days of exciting panel content and amazing parties. Attracting digital creatives as well as visionary technology entrepreneurs, the event celebrates the best minds and the brightest personalities of emerging technology. Whether you are a hard-core geek, a dedicated content creator, a new media entrepreneur, or just someone who likes being around an extremely creative community, SXSW Interactive is for you!

We display a ServerBeach branded booth and always have a great turnout. This year was no different. SXSW Interactive attracts so many web 2.0 start up companies that are responsible for changing the way we utilize the Internet  – Facebook, Twitter. Can you imagine all the responsible parties all at the same show? That’s a lot of brain!

Jason’s company, Mosso / The Rackspace Cloud, was also exhibiting at the show.  This year, we didn’t make it to the show but we did make it to a few after parties. I went with Jason to the Rackspace Cloud Party across from the Austin Convention Center. They went all out with belly dancers, hukas and cigar rolling. Cool party!

It was great to see a lot of San Antonio representation. IncSpring, Blellow, Salesby5 and of course Rackspace and ServerBeach / PEER 1.

We also went to the Belmont party. People that I ran into: Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, Tony CEO of Zappos, Matt Founder of Wordpress (the app I use for this blog) and many others. I was surrounded by well known innovators and thought leaders. People that inspire me and many others. I was in geek heaven!

I was able to get many photos with people. Here is a shot of Guy and I. He was very sweet to have stopped and taken a picture. He had to have been so exhausted from all the speaking and interaction with people.

Last week I was in Vancouver visiting the PEER 1 headquarters. I love visiting Vancouver. It’s an absolutely gorgeous city full of diversity. The PEER 1 office is located in the Harbour Centre (Canadian spelling) in dowtown Vancouver. They have a picturesque view of the Habour with beautiful white cap mountains in the background.

Althought it was strictly a business trip, I found myself skiing in the mountains one evening. It was Wednesday evening, the day before I returned home. I was asking our Marketing team what they were up to that evening and they said a few people were going to go snowboarding. This was at 4:30pm. Really? No way! Cypress Mountain is literally 20 minutes from downtown Vancouver and the ski lift is open until 10pm. Many Canadians go during their lunch hour or after work. It’s apparent because you will see people walking around in snow boots or carrying their snowboards to the office. Although I had zero skiing equipment and hadn’t skiid in literally 10 years, I got this rush of excitement to go.

So Ramon, our Marcom Production Manager, picked me up and off we went up to Cypress Mountain. We met up with a bunch of PEER 1 employees, Canadians and then 3 of us from Texas and Atlanta.  It was so embarrassing because I showed up in my Carlos Santana boots while everyone was in their stylish snowboard outfits. I so looked out of place but hey, I came from the office and had no intention on going skiing. I had to rent everything from pants to jacket to boots and skiis. Everything, including the ski lift, was only $84! Not bad. So there I was in my ski outfit with my skiis and poles while 90% of the people there were snowboarders. It was definitely more “cool and hip” to be a snowboarder. I didn’t care, I wasn’t about to learn to snowboard that night.

We started off on the greens and well, I stayed on greens all night. I had a couple of yard sales but nothing crazy. I just get nervous when I start going too fast and then I lose control. Plus snowboarders jumping all around me made me a little nervous. On our ski lift, we rode over the Winter Olympic snowboard set up. That was pretty sweet to see set up. The entire experience was awesome. Skiing at night, in Canada, seeing the Winter Olympic set up and being wth peers, it was definitely something you don’t do everday…well not for a Texan…well especially not for a San Antonian.

Ramon took my FLIP video and recorded while he snowbaorded down. Here are a few clips.

PEER 1 is running a new ad campaign: Is your Business ready for a Million Hits? We have 3 YouTube videos running right now and embedded below is the Slacker. PEER 1 is an IT infrastructure solution provider, offering fully scalable hosting. The message we are trying to get across is simply that as your business grows, we grow with you. If you start off at PEER 1 and your business begins to take off, there is no need to panic and search elsewhere for hosting. With 15 data centers located across North America and offering dedicated, managed and co location hosting, we have a solution for you. Any questions about hosting, please let me know.

I attended the PEER 1 Leadership Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona this past week. We stayed at the 5 star resort, Fairmont Princess. It was quite a treat and I am so appreciative to work for a company that invests in their employees the way PEER 1 does. Over the course of 2 days, we had time to reflect and engage in discussions with team members regarding leadership.
Tuesday evening we had a chili cook off contest by the pool and that was exciting! Tuesday evening was also the Presidential Election. It was hard to concentrate on the task at hand because we were all thinking about who was going to be our next President. All of us, including our Canadian colleagues, were so engaged and anxious. It was the first time some of our Canadian colleagues actually wanted to be an American. They wanted to be able to vote in one of the most important elections in history yet. When the numbers presented themselves and Obama won, we cheered. I couldn’t believe it! I had to go back to my hotel room to watch the speech because I wanted to be fully focused on what Obama was going to say. Seeing him and his family come out was so beautiful and his speech was more than what I was expecting, it was moving. To see all the people gathered in Grant Park, all the people march in front of the White House, all the parties held across the world made me feel so proud to be an American. I actually felt, for the first time in years, that we could be a united country. We do have people that care and share the same passion. We just needed someone to lead the way.
I watched the news until I fell asleep. The next morning, I woke up to the New York Times paper at my hotel room door. Front cover story was Obama’s Presidential Election win. I am keeping this paper forever! In conjunction on what I was able to learn from our leadership conference, I actually learned a great deal on leadership from Obama’s win. Obama has taught us that if you have a goal or a dream in life, you can obtain it even if it is against all odds. Excuses are not acceptable. He has also taught us that you can’t do it alone and need the support of others.
I will never forget this day. What I was doing and where I was will remain in my memory forever. I was able to hear stories from my grandparents about World War II, the Great Depression, JFK and MLK and now I will have a story to tell my children and grandchildren. A beautiful story on one of the most historic events in US history.

ServerBeach competed in the San Antonio Sports Foundation Duck n Dodge Tournament this past weekend. It was being presented by 99.5 Kiss FM and Kens 5 TV and being hosted at the new Rackspace building’s parking lot. All entry fees were going to support the San Antonio Sports Foundation youth sports and fitness programs. We got a team together last minute to compete in the tournament and I committed to play. The last time I played dodgeball was in grade school and I thoroughly enjoyed it! This was a bit different as it was coed and we were all adults, having fun being kids again. We showed up ready to bring it on. Although we had good team spirit, we literally had our butts handed to us. We won 1 out of maybe 10? At least we didn’t go undefeated! I swear these teams were practicing on the weekends or something. We really aren’t that bad! Next year, we will have cool team gear and be ready to really bring it on. This was just practice for us. All that matters is that we had a blast!