Microsoft Convergence 2011 Atlanta - Day 1 cont.

After the end of our GPUG session, there was the official Convergence Reception party.  It was held in the grounds between the Georgia Aquarium and the World of Coca Cola museum.

 
Note the huge big top in the background for the Peter Pan production that is in town.

There was the Nick Brophy band providing fantastic live music. They played a great variety of cover songs and it ready sounded like the original artists were there.

The Georgia Aquarium is the world's largest aquarium habitat holding 6.3 million gallons of water.  There is a total of 4,574 square feet of viewing area, including a 100 foot long underwater tunnel.

We got to meet many of the fish including some "friendly looking" sharks. It holds 4 massive whale sharks as well as manta rays and all kinds of other fish.

There was also a couple of largetooth sawfish, which looks like they should be plugged in to power to trim the garden hedges.

The final view of the aquarium is through a 23 foot tall, 61 foot wide viewing window made from 2 foot thick acrylic.  This would explain how there is a total of 185 tons of acrylic windows used. The picture below will give an idea of the scale, but only includes about a third of the total width of the window.

Sadly, we did not have time to view all the other smaller exhibits.  There is definitely enough to see and do at the aquarium to fill an entire day. We left the aquarium and walked over towards the World of Coca Cola museum (Atlanta being the home of Coca Cola).  Here is a photo of the massive neon Coke bottle that starts empty and fills up.

On the way over Sheila, Leslie and I met up with Mariano and Yulia. Yulia Smotrova is one of the newest members of the Microsoft Dynamics GP blogging community.  She is originally from Russia, but is based in New York and has a number of year's experience with Dynamics GP. Here is the link to her blog: iExpERP&CRM.

Once inside the World of Coca Cola we were met by the Cola Bear: a 7 foot tall polar bear that really enjoyed having Yulia scratch his chin.

We did not have a lot of time to look around the museum as it was getting late and they were closing up, but we did go to the area where you can try 60 different soft drink flavours from around the world. I want to know why only the Chinese get the melon and watermelon flavoured ones, I though they were great.

After a look through the museum shop on the way out (you would be amazed at the items that can be "Coca Cola" or "Coke" branded), we headed home to the hotels. On the way back, we caught up with Doug Pitcher who took a photo just so he could write something rude about me, see his post. :-)

The conference officially starts tomorrow with the Keynote address....

David