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| Sixth Street Austin (the Dirty Sixth?) |
Among her most recent travels, StringGirl had the rare occasion to travel someplace in the US. Domestic travel rarely appearing in these posts, this is a monumental occasion that will require several posts to keep up.
Where to stay? After having been unceremoniously told that my previous reservation at the DownTown Doubletree was not being honored (boo, loss of clout with me Hilton People), I used
Hipmunk to direct me to an available lodging within walking distance of the Austin Convention Center. It pointed me toward an AirBnB listed as "
Walk to 6th Street and Convention Center". That is worth a blog post on its own. However, it bears saying now in this post. The place was perfect and indeed a short walk to the convention center.
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| Potato image of StringGirl with the box from Shipleys Do-Nuts |
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| Kolaches from Shipleys Do-Nuts |
One of the kind folks from Dell, who was our host for the week, was kind enough to introduce us to
Kolaches or Klobasnek from
Shipley Do-Nuts. Those are savory, pigs in a blanket style morning pastries in the tradition of Czech immigrants to Texas.
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| Contigo, needs a post of its own |
He later took us out to dinner at
Contigo an Austin restaurant modeled after the co-owners childhood ranch. With outdoor seating (only?) the restaurant has a downhome feel with out of this world food. Plenty of proper kitchen and gourmet cred without pretension. Loved every bite. Much more about that place deserves to be recorded here. Review to come.
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| Why were we in Austin Anyway? To appear at Dell EMC World |
Spent much of the time in Austin indoors at the Austin Convention Center, locked up in a booth, performing demos of IC.IDO, the virtual reality engineering tool that Eric now fronts for his new job. A nice part of the trip is when the Vice Chair of Dell, Jeff Clarke, did a big intro on our application as part of his presentation in the General Session (keynote).
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| Concert by the Alabama Shakes |
After the First day at the show, they had a gala premiere party to celebrate this first Dell EMC World (as separate companies each Dell and EMC had large events like this one, but this is the first since there merger only earlier in September 2016). During that Gala we were entertained by many local Autsin acts, but the headliner was the "Alabama Shakes". I had only peripherally known much about the group, but am now a convert.
Completely blew me and the rest of the audience away.
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| Alabama shakes' Brittany Howard |
Words... fail.... you should listen....
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| Tender Belly from the Moonshine Grill |
There is great food culture in Austin, which I could not have even scraped the surface of. We did find a nice close to the conference center place to eat after spending the full night Monday trying to get our demos running. Not completely successfully. Moonshine Grill did not fail us by having good food and good beer selection. Cheers Moonshine Grill. Thanks.
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| Beer and Popcorn at the Moodnshine Grill |
Austin Beerworks Fire Eagle American IPA was the brew of choice that night. Nice.
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| Instant Haiku from 'The Haiku Guys" |
Finally, of note was our meet up with
The Haiku Guys, who set up a pop-up free haiku stand at the Dell EMC Premiere party. More on that in a complete write-up to follow.
That is 3 additional posts just on that one trip to Austin that StringGirl owes us!
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