It’s been over five months since I last posted here.  That was just prior to a trip to San Francisco to participate in a Paragon forum.  While I must hold the details of that forum confidential, I will say three things about it:

1. The other panel members impressed me with their qualifications and their personalities.  I intend to stay in contact with them, the client, and Paragon Development.
2. They worked us pretty hard to wring every bit of wisdom and insight from our brains that they could manage in 8 hours.
3. I would highly recommend this process to anyone who is considering marketing a new product.

After the forum, I met up with my eldest son at SFO before returning home.  It was great to see him again, and I’m really glad he’s back at Stanford and doing well there.

Since that time, it’s been heads down for me.  I’ve gathered a couple of new clients, as well as some new work for an existing client after more than a decade of inactivity.  Of course, I’ve continued to work for Synergex and a few other regular customers.  Add to that my writing on TechRepublic and [GAS] as well as my personal sites, and I find myself looking for a fifth hand to reach for my coffee cup.

On Tuesday, June 9, I’ll be in San Francisco to participate as a panel member in one of Paragon Development’s Voice-of-Market forums, concerning the development and marketing of a new programming language.  Further details are confidential, but I hope one day to be able to say “I was there when…”

Many of you know that one of my clients, Synergex, is a vendor of their own programming language (Synergy/DE).  This new language is not intended to compete in the same market space, and my engagement is only for the one day.  I wouldn’t have accepted it if I had perceived any possibility of a conflict of interest.

I’m looking forward to the event – programming language design is my favorite specialty.  Besides advising Synergex on the design of their language features, I participated on the X3J12 ANSI subcommittee for Standard DIBOL, and I’ve written a number of compilers and interpreters – some of which were for languages of my own design.  This should be most interesting – especially the opportunity to discuss it with seven other industry experts.

I’ll only be in San Francisco for the day, but I should have a couple of hours free at SFO between about 4:30 to 6:30 PM before flying home.  If anyone would like to meet up there, leave a comment here or contact me.

I’ve returned from vacation with the family — now I need a relief, so it’s back to work.

Be back on Thursday, July 10th.

Gee but it’s great to be back home.

I returned late on Friday night from a productive trip to Synergex. Back in the early ’90s, I used to travel so often that I kept a bag packed and ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Nowadays, I travel so infrequently that just preparing for and winding down from a trip takes a day or two in itself.

I’ll be catching up on things that happened while I was away, and “just trying to keep my customers satisfied”.

I’ll be in the Sacramento area May 27-30, 2008 on business.  Gold River, specifically.  At the offices of Synergex.