Round trip to Madrid

Very recently I went to Madrid to participate in a meeting together with Claes Larsson from Guide Market Solutions and a customer prospect (which I for obvious reasons will not name in this post).

Initially the meeting was planned so I could fly in, have the meeting, and return home the same night. But since the only available flights out of Madrid required transfers through what seemed like a random selection of all of the worlds airports, I choose to book a hotel instead and fly back (direct) the next morning.

Soon this solution would prove very convinient and interesting, but before I get ahead of myself I have to start from the beginning.

The trip
On Wednesday morning May 14 I get ready and call for a cab.
Note to self: When cab drivers in your own city try to hustle you on your way to the airport, it may be a bad sign for the rest of the trip...
After taking what seems like the worlds longest shortcut, I finally arrive at the terminal, now focusing on the next important things: check-in and coffee.

My plane arrives in Barajas airport in Madrid fashionably late.
Nothing to declare. I make it to the exit and find myself a cab (this time expecting to be hustled) and arrive at the office in good time for the meeting, even with the detours.

The meeting
Attendees at the meeting includes the resident webmaster, a consultant (project manager), Claes Larsson and myself. The deal in question consists of a handful servers, extranet functionality and a shop.
I start out presenting the editing functionalities, versioning control, device control and language handling before talking about the backend stuff.
They have a userbase with close to one million customers, so scalability and perfomance is key. However, before I get so far, the webmaster interrupts asking about SEO and what we do to support this important marketing issue. A very valid question, and luckily we already have a state-of-the-art module which handles this in a userfriendly and logic way. (More about this specific tool will be available in my next post). Naturally I present the tool right away. The webmaster seem very pleased.

After more chit chat about how to solve specific issues like handling lists, we get into talking about how we deal with that many user accounts and personalization. The answer is quite simple, their existing user database will be integrated and connected into their desired extranet setup, re-using the existing user profiles. We have done this sort of thing many times before, just take a look at bwin.com (an online bookmaking company) with their 13 million user-accounts - all built on Sitecore.

The meeting was scheduled to last 2 hours, but we ended up spending 3 hours talking about the solution and various scenarios, only interrupted by the decision maker taking a short break to postpone some other meetings he had that day. Bottomline, it was a very promising and a most interesting meeting.

Madrid by night
After the meeting Claes and I agree to meet later in the city. I get to my hotel by cab with a driver who both looks a bit like Ronaldo and talks about 'futebol' when we pass some football training facility. I almost throw the Michael Laudrup card but decide not to, since I don't speaks Spanish anyway.
Hotel. Check in. Internet access is 5 Euro for 1 hour. Dang.

I make a few calls, check my mail and get a quick shower. New cab ride back into town, no funny business except for the driver being unable to successfully use his creditcard machinery. He gladly accepts cash however. Sigh.

We have dinner at a nice cosy tapas place with excellent food, but the highlight of the evening has got to be the city-wide party going on. May 15 is the day where Madrid celebrates their patron saint San Isidro Labrador with a holiday. Naturally you use this chance to party the night before, which was indeed the case here. The streets were literally filled with people including a batch of Claes' friends. And the bars served cheap beer and drinks in 1-litre cups. Wow.

Returning to Copenhagen
With 4 hours of sleep and no breakfast at the hotel, I make it to the airport in good time before departrure. 3 hour flight, laptop, batch of dvds. Oh sweet battery life.

Thanks alot to Claes and his friends, and of course to the customer prospect which I hope to hear more from very soon. See you next time Madrid.