Demo Pods
Sunday, September 3rd 2006 | Ismael Ghalimi
In looking for the right pieces of equipment for the demo pods of our sponsors at the Office 2.0 Conference, we focused our attention on setups that would be easy to install, use, and resell after the event. Our initial idea was to get an Apple Mac Mini, an Apple 20” Cinema Display, a keyboard, and a mouse, but when the number of sponsors started to grow and approached 30, we realized that having to deal with four boxes for each setup would mean carrying 120 boxes around. Not exactly convenient. So we decided to go for the integrated and significantly more powerful Apple 24-inch iMac Core 2 Duo instead. We will have 15 to 20 of them for sale at 25% off retail price immediately after the event. If you’re interested, please reserve yours today.
Beside having the computer, display, keyboard, and mouse coming together in a single box, the iMac also provides the benefit of having a built-in iSight camera that exhibitors could use to scan the badges of participants stopping by their pods. For this purpose, we will print a barcode on all badges and pre-install something like Delicious Library on each iMac.
The iMacs we will buy new for the conference have the following features:
- 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- 1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x512
- 250GB Serial ATA Drive
- NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 128MB SDRAM
- SuperDrive 8X (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
- Apple Keyboard & Mighty Mouse + Mac OS X (US English)
- 24-inch widescreen LCD
- AirPort Extreme
- Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
They will come with Apple Remote, Apple Keyboard, Mighty Mouse, Power cord, Install/restore DVDs, Printed and electronic documentation, all neatly wrapped into their original boxes. They retail for $1,999.00, and we will sell them for $1,499.00 (plus taxes). If you want one, please drop me a line. I will reserve it for you, and you will be able to pick it up in the evening of the conference’s second day. Payment can be made by check or credit card.
Entry filed under: Office 2.0
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This is off topic, but…
I found an interesting review (via digg) here.
The fact that the bulk of the article focusses on what they are and what they do, rather than whether or not it’s a good idea that they exist is a step in the right direction.
Andrew,
Very good article indeed.
Ismael,
Perhaps you could hold one of the machines back for a quiz/competition.
I agree with you Ismael about the article identified by Andy
It did raise some points that I have pondered over.
Bob,
That’s a very good idea. We’ll think about something.
SAP TechEd Blogger’s Corner…
The other guys in the Blogger’s Corner are posting great coverage…
Ismael:
I’ve been traveling for a while, unable to keep up with IT|Redux until now.
I have a couple of questions for you:
1. I am looking at replacing my old Gateway laptop and I am on the fence between the Sony SZ and a Dell Latitude. Lately I have really been mesmerized by the MacBookPro, but I have a hard time deciding on making the switch to Apple. Any thoughts on that? What hardware are you using and why? I seem to remember you also have a little Sony VAIO — I love these.
2. More importantly — I have a new job working for a high tech start-up and my area of responsibility is developing the manufacturing and supply chain capability to scale up from pilot testing to large scale commercial operations.
My question is, from a BPM point of view and in your opinion, what are some of the things I need to watch out for, so that later down the road I can integrate the supply chain with a BPM system? I need some B2B integration with customers, but I would also like to manage supply chain processes that may not by covered by the B2B side of things, such as internal processes, etc.
Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks,
-Ryan
PS: I had a Web 2.0 “twilight zone” experience when I lost my connectivity for a few days, and I could not access my Salesforce.com contacts. I’m still trying to figure out a way to download my contact list to my Blackberry.
Ryan,
The switch to Mac is a lot easier than it looks, so I would recommend the MacBookPro. And beside, you can run Microsoft Windows on a Mac now, so I cannot think of any reason why not to get one. But if you cannot, the Sony VAIO laptops are a lot better than the Dell ones. Much better industrial design in general.
Regarding your question on supply chain, the only advice I can give you is this: keep it simple. Try to streamline the actual business process as much as you can, then use simple IT tools to automate and track parts of it. The simpler you keep it initially, the easier it will be to make it evolve down the road.
As far as data synchronization is concerned, this is a pain. Nothing new there.
Ismael, Ryan:
A new product called Relational Junction might be helpful to you. It can synchronize databases and create table joins between different databases. If you have a local SQL backup of your Salesforce.com data, you can at least access it with database-driven applications when you are off the Web. Once you have local data, putting it into a form where you can import and synchronize it to your handheld devices becomes easy. A recent Rails project of ours involved setting up Relational Junction to provide local access for an extended schema, and doing the synchronization correctly with SFDC.
Salesforce.com also has a nice API that could be leveraged to create a data synchronization application in Python, Ruby on Rails, or similar Web 2.x tools.
Best regards, -Strata
Strata,
Thanks for the information. I’ll have to take a look at this.
Ismael - I’ll buy ours (EchoSign’s). thanks! Jason
Ryan wanted his contacts on his blackberry, we have free email based access to Salesforce.com from BlackBerry, Treo or Windows mobile phones. No software is required on the phone, these are just a few email addresses that you add to your address book, and the server does the rest.
It says it’s a trial (you can also access hoovers and linked in), but we are not currently ending “trial’s” at 30 days, so enjoy… Not meant to be a promo in the blog, given that we don’t want you to pay, so hopefully that is ok. By the way, this allows you to pull account information, contacts, log a meeting or a task etc. I’m a frequent user and I rarely log in to Salesforce.com directly…
After you register, you can use the following:
mailto:cmSFMyLeads@mobile.clairmail.com
Retrieve the list of the leads (up to 20) assigned to you
mailto:cmSFAllMyLeads@mobile.clairmail.com
Retrieve the list of the leads (all) assigned to you
mailto:cmSFMyTasks@mobile.clairmail.com
Retrieve your list of tasks
mailto:cmSFAccountInfo@mobile.clairmail.com
Retrieve account information
mailto:cmSFAccountOpportunities@mobile.clairmail.com
Retrieve information on opportunities assocoiated with an account
mailto:cmSFContactInfo@mobile.clairmail.com
Retrieve contact information
mailto:cmSFLogCall@mobile.clairmail.com
Log a call with a contact
mailto:cmSFLogMeeting@mobile.clairmail.com
Log a meeting with a contact
mailto:cmSFNewTask@mobile.clairmail.com
Add a new task to your task list
See you at the event…
Ismael,
I’ll take ours — Zoho. -Raju
Ismael,
I’ll take our iMac, too. -Sam
Hi Ismael,
Any macs left? -John
[…] Because of the limited time and resources we have to put this thing together, speaking opportunities will be very limited, but feel free to send me ideas over email. Also, we will have room for sponsors, but the demo pods will use Apple MacBook Pro 17″ laptops instead of our regular iMac setups, mainly as a way to reduce shipping costs. If you would like your company to be represented there, please drop me a line. […]
[…] Last year’s demo pods where cool, but this year’s will set a new standard, thanks to Apple’s release of brand new iMac computers. With their black and silver cases, they will perfectly match the Dell SE198WFP screens we will use to display the logos of our sponsors. And much like last year, all these sleek iMacs will be on sale immediately after the conference for a cool 17% off retail price. […]
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