Emonska klet, Ljubljana, Slovenia

A special pizza with live alien worms a.k.a. chilli peppers :)


Tomaz (Tomaž) Pelko - IBM Global Financing and Quality Management guy. If you want to improve your IT infrastructure, but you don't want to ar can't pay up front, he can arrange you a good leasing offer. There were several branches out of our discussion. We touched on the difficult situation of translation of high-tech terms. One one side legislation and respect to local language makes high-tech vendors translate the terms and texts, but on the other hand users don't understand the translated terms. One of the more capable companies for translating IT texts (and also IBM specific) to Slovenian language is ZOP http://www.zop-cr.com/Prevod/index.html If you didn't know, besides being the biggest IT company, IBM is also the biggest leasing company for computer equipment. The financing arm is called IBM Global Financing (IGF) And IBM doesn't lease only IBM equipment ... http://ibm.com/financing As we were talking, a cat caught a live pigeon just next to the tables. We were experiencing National Geographic type of action in the very center of Ljubljana. A lesson from table manners (bonton): Toothpicks are not supposed to be on the table and they should be used away from the table - outside or at the rest rooms. That's how it is supposed to be at least. http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?tab=1&pid=408653&agid=2

Sestica, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Salah Al-Halawani is working in Dubai, but his heart is in Jordan. I wonder if has seen Petra. In Jordan. Petra is nice. We talked a lot about Middle East, Arab world, Pakistan and also a lot about SecondLife (http://secondlife.com) or SL. SL seems to be part of every discussionm in these days.


Miha Music (Mušič) is the guy you wanna talk to when you are thinking of, sizing, setting up, managing and repairing your newest and coolest IBM System p machine. These babies rock. http://ibm.com/systems/p/ And when he is done tweaking your Unix beast, he loves to read Frederik Pohl and his Gateway (Heechee Saga)


Elena Pentcheva is very nice lady from Bulgaria, working for a succesful IT company Acsior (http://www.acsior.com/). They have very healthy climate in the company and presumably nobody smokes. For some reason she didn't talk much. I guess it was Salas and myself not letting anybody else have their say.


Dinner of contrasts: grilled all-vegie meal on one side and big fat sausage on the other side.

Emonska klet, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Peter Gersak (Geršak) - when you are defining, planning and/or implementing complex solution that runs mainly on IBM middleware (http://ibm.com/middleware), Peter will help you get the right technical team to advise and make proof-of-concept. He finished Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (http://www.fs.uni-lj.si/eng) and topped it with M.Sc. degree from Faculty of Economics (http://www.ef.uni-lj.si/en/) his major being Business Process Management. He worked for a while for Trata (http://www.trata.danfoss.com/) puting pictures in digital via AutoCad. At Oracle he was doing several things before joining IBM as Technical Presales person in WebSphere Business Integration area. He tasted how life&work at 3GEN (http://www.3gen.si/eng) feels like, before he rejoined IBM. He has 2 kid girls (1 year and 3 years old) and is building his own house in Ljubljana now. When he will have more free time, he will devote it to mountain climbing, mountain tour guiding, trekking and backpack style traveling.


Klemen Dragar - if you want to implement secure and reliable SOA (Services Oriented Architecture) http://ibm.com/soa/ in your company or beef up your Business Integration and Business Process Management infrastructure, Klemen can help you get the software and get in touch with competent resources that will make your wishes come true. Klemen finished FOV http://www.fov.uni-mb.si/, worked for third mobile operator Vega run by WesternWireless - now Alltel (http://www.alltel.com/) Besides "enjoying life every minute" as he puts it, he would love to spend more time meeting and getting to know new people, cultures and also organizing events. Organizing weding being one of them ... something in this sense:http://www.ezweddingplanner.com/

Romansa, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Romansa is a restaurant, owned by Maxi department store, owned by Mercator, Slovenian retail giant.


Andreja Jernejcic (Jernejčič) - IBM Slovenia PR lady. The debate spanned networking, communication, travel, tribes, corporate image and more. Andreja is an interesting person with a very rich other, non-IBM side. You can get a good feel about it on her website: http://www.andreja-jernejcic.com/


Veggie soup. Spaghetti bolognese. Green salad. Lunch not really worth mentioning.

Cow Parade, Budapest, Hungary

Cow Parade is not a place. Nor was there any eating done. It's an art exchibition. Cows usually get eaten as beef steaks and one cow was transformed into an ice cream. That gave them the ticket to this blog.

Net cafe Pollus City Center, Bratislava, Slovakia

Tariq Zamrawi from Tempest. Beer. Pistachio. Situation review. Business Development ideas. Tempest is a very capable IT solutions company. www.tempest.sk One of the best for IBM Tivoli software solutions. www.ibm.com/tivoli

Maschu Maschu, Vienna, Austria

Falafel place. Nice. Treating Mike Weinnig from IBM Tivoli Channel Enablement to "orientalisches" meal in Vienna.