10 years of tech travel

10 years is not such a long time. It can be summed up in a little black book in the form of immigration control stamps and visas. It seems a shame, on having to renew my passport, to relegate all those memories to the dustbin (if it weren`t for the 10-year US visa that only runs out eight years from now, but probably isn`t much good anyway, after 9/11).

So I thought this would be a good time to tell a few stories about 10 great years partially spent travelling to cover conferences and vendor announcements.

My first IT-related trip, and my first overseas one, was for HP. My brief was to cover a raft of printer launches in Dublin, without knowing too much about printing technologies, consumables, channels, market segments or how to set up a printer. Good thing, then, that I won my very own inkjet printer during that trip - a 720C, I seem to remember. It was near-photo-quality, complete with the right glossy stock on which to print ... what? (I was a bachelor who worked 12 hours a day and did not possess a digital camera or much at all beyond a fridge and a bed.)

No matter. In my innocence I booked a couple of extra days in Dublin, photographing such lovelies as the Molly Malone statue, which now seems to me like an early Wonder-Bra ad. I pulled into a two-by-four metre B&B for 35 pounds a night and had enough money left for two Burger King specials. It was freezing, and I found myself drifting about the streets with little to do or to do it with, all my plans to travel to the coast adrift on a sniping wind. One morning, I had black pudding.

The next year, it was IBM. Its DB2 announcement was a step or two up in terms of technical knowledge, and again I found my background wanting, but it was the location (Euro Disney near Paris) that bothered me most. I couldn`t believe I had thought it would be Paris, and there I was - just out of reach. At the end of the conference, at which I learned a tremendous amount about database technologies, I got myself and my suitcase into a train to the city, and asked the girl across from me what the best thing would be to do in Paris if one had a few hours. Her advice - to leave my luggage at Charles de Gaulle first, was obviously intended to put me right off Parisians, because the airport, of course, wouldn`t take it.

So I lugged the 25-kilogrammer across the Champs Elys'ees with enough money for a samoosa, which I bought from an Asian vendor, speaking English, I`m proud to say. The people in the streets were aloof, and not half as good-looking as I`d been led to believe, but I kind of liked their self-containment.

In the same year, it appears, I went to Namibia, with Quantum and Memtek. One night in tents, sitting on rough carpets and drinking some sort of herbal tea, is what I remember most fondly, but I also remember Gavin "Flawless" Lawless (ex-Shark rugby player) and Simon Campbell-Young hosting us, running like madmen up and down impossibly high dunes, to sandboard down again.

We had some crazy shows, one of which I starred in as a demented, shell-shocked ex-Angola trooper named Bomskok Du Preez. No doubt to get some Quantum messaging across in a kind of perverted school play, about the benefits of entrusting your data to Quantum. Everybody laughed a lot, though it might just have been at me, and not the hilarity of the plot or the fantastic acting.

The people in the streets were aloof, and not half as good-looking as I`d been led to believe, but I kind of liked their self-containment.

Carel Alberts, special editions editor, ITWeb Brainstorm

Quantum, a perennial journalistic favourite, also took us to Mozambique, where I did NOT steal beautiful shells off the beaches and did not cope with the scuba diving. Another Simon, from SA Computer Magazine, whom I don`t see around anymore, was a real scuba fanatic, along with everyone else, it seemed. I learned as much more about data storage as I could and lay on my bed at night, mopping mosquitoes and sweat off my travel-weary brow.

I skip a few to get to my first US trip with Xerox, where I had the chance to interview Anne Mulcahy, and met some nice journos from other developing nations. The funniest was a guy, called Rodrigo Cervantes, from Mexico, who did NOT want to be asked whether he was related to the man who had written Don Quixote, or whether Mexicans were really all lazy, tequila-swilling drawlers. Not that anyone asked him. He also hated Barney the dinosaur, of which a lot was to be seen around Times Square.

New York, Connecticut - it`s not the same as we see on television, but it`s still one of the best places I`ve ever been to, except perhaps my various trips to Paris, some of which I wrote about another time. I`d recommend going there anytime.

My last trips were to Barcelona, and again to Dublin, and I must say the Gaudi architecture in the former is something everyone should experience. Especially the unfinished Church of the Holy Family, started by Antonio Gaudi, of which completion is being funded sporadically by visitor money; the sight and the story were among the most touching things of all my travels.

At the end of 10 years of travel for technology I`m only sad that I cannot relate all my experiences in 800 words. Until we meet again!