Life 19 Mar 2005 11:33 am
Terrebit Peering Forum
XO Communications has a router located in a facility in Miami called the NAP of the Americas (NOTA). NOTA is owned by a company called Terremark (http://www.terremark.com). Every year in March, Terremark hosts a peering forum for its customers (http://www.terremark.com/terrebit.htm). Myself and Marcellus have attended this conference the last two years.
This year the forum was 1 day in Miami and 3 days on a cruise in the Bahamas. All I had to pay for was a plane ticket to and from Miami and the rest of the conference was covered by Terremark, Lucent, and LINX (London Internet Exchange). I viewed the price of the ticket as a bargin for a vacation in the Bahamas and a chance to network with some other people in my industry.
We flew out of St. Louis to Miami on Thursday, March 3rd at 5:15 in the evening. The flight to Miami was pretty uneventful except for Marcellus getting flagged by TSA as needing further investigation. I figure it was about his turn as the two times we have travelled together to conferences, I have been the one who got my luggage searched, my shoes removed, etc.
We arrived in Miami, got our luggage, got a cab to the hotel, checked into the hotel, and dropped off our luggage. By this time it was nearing 9PM. Before we left St. Louis I had spoken with a few of the people going to this conference and found out that he group from the conference was going out to dinner and doing some dancing in South Beach. They were meeting in the lobby at 6PM. Marcellus and I decided that instead of meeting up with this group, we would just grab dinner in the hotel resturant and relax. Friday’s meeting started at 8AM with breakfast being at 7. We decided that a long night of dinner, drinks, and dancing was probably not the way to start this trip. When we got to the lobby, we found there was a small group of people from the conference with the same thing in mind. We joined them for dinner and had a few drinks before calling it a night about 11PM.
Friday morning I got up and ready by about 7:30. I headed downstairs and checked in to the conference. I grabbed a muffin and some OJ from the buffet for breakfast and grabbed Marcellus and myself a couple good seats with power connections for our laptops (a must have at any Internet conference 
). At our seats we had a complimentary laptop bag (provided by Lucent), a beachbag, a beach towel, and a long sleeve t-shirt (all provided by Terremark and Linx). The meetings on Friday were somewhat interesting but not really note worthy to anyone reading this. They lasted until about 2PM. At 2PM we grabbed our bags and headed for the busses that took us to the port.
Once we were on the boat, we had a bon voyage party in the Viking Lounge on the 14th floor of the boat. It is a round bar that over looks the entire ship, the ocean, and the port. We sat and watched as the boat pulled out of the harbor and out into the open seas.
Most of the rest of the trip on the boat involved eating, drinking, dancing, and socializing with other people from the Internet industry.
Saturday we stopped on CocoCay Island. We spent most of the day just sitting/laying around, talking, and drinking. We had a BBQ on the island for lunch. A few of the people in the group went and rode Jet Skis in the ocean in the afternoon.
On Sunday, we stopped on Nassua island. That morning, we took a tour of the Cable Bahamas facility. Cable Bahamas (http://www.cablebahamas.com/) is the largest Cable/Internet Provider in the Bahamas. They own a subsidiary called Coral Wave (http://www.cablebahamas.com/coralwave.lasso), which is the Internet side of the house. They provide high speed Internet access to more than 51,000 people in the Bahamas. Cable Bahamas also owns a subsidiary named Caribbean Crossings (http://www.caribbeancrossings.com) that has a fiber network that connects all the inhabitted Bahama Islands together. This fiber network is over 600km of sub-marine fiber.
Most of the rest of the day on Sunday was spent shopping and just enjoying the sights in Nassua. Sunday night, we had our typical happy hour followed by dinner. After dinner, a group of us decided to go to a karaoke bar. I did not do any singing by myself but a bunch of people in the group did. The last song of the night was YMCA by the Villiage People and everyone in our group decided we would chip in and help sing the song. After the karaoke bar closed, we headed down to a dance club and danced the night away. I finally headed back to my cabin about 4AM totally exhausted.
Monday morning, we got up and disembarked from the ship. This process, while very well organized, was uneventful. Marcellus and I took a cab from the port over to the hotel we had stayed in Thursday night. We checked our bags with the concierge. We then caught a cab to South Beach to do a little shopping, eating, and just relaxing in the sun. About 5PM, we caught a cab back to the hotel, picked up our luggage, and headed off to the airport for the flight home.
All in all, it was a really enjoyable trip. I really hated to come back to the cold of St. Louis after 4 days in sunny Florida and the Bahamas. Pictures of the event can be found at http://www.ryburn.org/gallery/Terrebit.
-Justin
