Trip to Montreal

Over the last 5+ years our company Mantis is fortunate to have developed an outstanding partnership with SAP both in the U.S. and Canada. We use their technology in a lot of the project work we do and we rely on it extensively in the cloud-based subscription services we provide. Our offering is a Social Media Analytics solution that measures the volume and sentiment of social media conversations for companies and their brands.

A month or so ago we were invited by SAP Canada to participate in an event they were having in their Montreal office. They were planning to bring a couple dozen large Canadian customers to their office and have a half day session focused on Social Media. In addition to a detailed session on our solution, they arranged for a key note speaker from Deloitte Consulting. Of course we agreed to participate and prepared some great material with sample customer scenarios for several of the companies they invited to the session.

In order to get to the event I started my day early in the morning, driving from Kirkland, WA to Vancouver, BC to catch a flight to Montreal, with a brief stop over in Toronto. Why the round about travel itinerary you ask? Well as I investigated flight options from Seattle to Montreal, I discovered a bit of a price disparity. Basically, flights from Seattle to Montreal run $1,500 to $3,000 and flights from Vancouver to Montreal run $500 to $1,000. So it was an easy decision to drive the 2 hours to Vancouver, park and hop a flight to Montreal. I'm sure my colleagues at Mantis are not surprised that I would take this fiscally conservative approach.

What's interesting is that I lived near Toronto and worked in the city for years before moving the the U.S. I've been in the Pearson International Airport literally hundreds of times, yet when I walked off the plane into the terminal that day, I had no idea where I was. I recognized nothing about the surroundings. I didn't know what terminal I was in, I didn't know what direction I was facing. I felt like I could have be in any airport in the world at that point. The flight to Montreal was easy and I arrived at Montreal-Trudeau Airport without incident, then caught a cab to the W Hotel.

The next morning I walked over to the SAP Montreal office and sat down to prepare for the afternoon session. Thanks again to our friends and colleagues at SAP for arranging the day. The entire event was put on with professionalism, the speakers were entertaining and the audience was appropriate and engaged. After a long afternoon, I said thank you to the folks at SAP in Montreal, got a recommendation for a restaurant for dinner and headed back to my hotel. The restaurant was Holder and was outstanding. I ate at the bar with a couple glasses of wine from the Rhone region in France and thoroughly enjoyed the meal.

I was lucky enough to catch an early flight from Montreal to Vancouver (non-stop this time) in the morning and got back home several hours earlier than I had planned.

All-in-all a great trip, well worth the time out of the office and the drive to Vancouver.