TRADING TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVES

Who'd have thought two days on the QE2 could be so hectic?

I don't expect a lot of sympathy, but having lived through a second marathon CIO Forum on board this magnificent ship, I'm frankly wiped out.

For those of you unfamiliar with the event, CIO Forum is the US version of Richmond Events' renowned City IT. The concept is simple: vendors pay to meet, wine and dine high-level technology executives in the luxurious, but captive, setting of the QE2. In return for a quite substantial freebie, delegates are required to show up for meetings with vendors who'd like to contact them. Or something like that.

This year, with more delegates and more vendors, the networking opportunity was extensive. We bumped into lots of old friends from last year: Kevin Gosney from Prebon Yamane enthused about the prospects for bandwidth broking. Paul Pluschkell of Ixnet, this year unbaseball-capped, but energetic as ever.

Some of our shore-side friends were also aboard, their first time. Nancy Schneier from Cambridge Technology Partners. State Street Brokerage CTO Frank Guerrera. Koch Industries' Rajiv Chodhari. The Standard & Poor's guys--Dan Connell and Jack Zwingli.

The weather this year was mediocre at best, creating little opportunity for distraction on the sun decks. The organizers parked the boat just off Coney Island during the day to allow people to use their cellular phones. But the fog rendered some Iridium satellite phones, which were being tested by some delegates as a backup facility for Y2K, inoperable.

By night, we headed out to sea, to allow gambling and smoking of Cuban cigars. Of course, all these activities were combined with serious business discussions over dinner and cocktails.

One of this life's occupational hazards, we'd say. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.