Visit to Dallas - 17-20 July 2005

I am in Dallas, Texas to present a paper on our project in Kuwait, which we completed last year.

This is the view from my hotel room window.

The presentation is part of the Oil & Gas User Group meeting, at the MRO-World conference.

MRO Software's Maximo is the system we implemented at the Kuwait Petrochemicals Company. It allows the engineers to maintain the plant's physical production assets, assess equipment failures and what to do about them, and allows them to plan and request resources and spare parts.

The keynote speaker yesterday was Rudy Giuliani, ex-Mayor of New York. Brilliant talk - covering leadership, 9/11, Ronald Reagan, Martin Luther King, London, the Pope, the mafia, and lots more. Really inspiring guy. He thinks leaders are made not born - and the key elements of leadership are: vision, clear beliefs, direction, optimism, courage, relentless planning, know your weaknesses and use good people around you.

Went to a presentation by BOC (which was dull). And to one by an ex-IBM'er John Patrick, who is a 'technology visionary', apparently. Fascinating talk, saying that we are at 5% of the internet's potential.

My session is on Wednesday. Last night (Monday) I went with old friends Robin Golding (from BP) and Neil McKinley (from CAN Developments), downtown for dinner and drinks and buying presents. I worked with Robin and Neil in 2003 in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and other places, and we presented at this event last year (in Washington DC). This year, I came out with T-shirts for them showing a photo of us walking in Washington with the words: 2003 Cape Town, 2004 Washington DC, 2005 Dallas.

Dallas is extremely clean. And the shopping malls are pristine. People are genuine, confident and polite. I bought a small cowboy hat for Nicholas.

Mohammed Al-Kandari, from the client in Kuwait - Petrochemical Industries Company - is here to present with me.

We plan to head to Dealey Plaza later today, to do the whole JFK - Lee Harvey Oswald thing. Book depository building, grassy knoll, lone crazed killer. The 6th floor of the book depository is now a museum.