A Tale of Two Conferences

As fortune would have it this week, the C++ Connections in Vegas overlaps with the annual Borland Developer's Conference in San Francisco.   I'm a little bummed because I hoped to attend both.  I stopped working at Borland in 1998, but prior to this year I spoke at every conference except one (when the date collided with the birth of my oldest son) since 1995 and served on the Advisory Board that planned the technical program for all except two conferences since 1995.  Hopefully the dates will line up better next year.  Technically, Borland is a competitor of mine since they produce a C++ compiler, but when viewed more broadly it's clear that Borland is an important part of the Windows ecosystem (heck, I'm pretty sure Microsoft is still an investor in Borland), so it's completely politically correct for me to wish them well.  :)

I was interested to see that they just announced Tod Nielsen (a former Microsoftie) as their new CEO.  The tools world has indeed come full circle when a softie becomes a barbarian (the other way around has been much more common <g>).  Tod seems like the right guy to build a stronger relationship between the two companies, which would be good for everyone.