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Well I'm back from my trip to Japan and China. Obviously I didn't get the chance to make this blog a travel diary, like I planned. I've never dealt well with jet lag or dealt with living out of a hotel well. Definitely a disadvantage considering how much travel I had. The result, however, was that I'd wake up at 5:00am and would spend a couple hours trying to get caught up on the email that had arrived overnight from the states during daylight hours. Then a full day teaching class. Then dinner and other social events with our students and hosts. At which point I'd be exhausted and would typically go to sleep right after getting back to the hotel.

Not that I'm complaining. Our hosts in Tokyo and Beijing were fabulous. Many thanks go out to Michiya Matsumoto and Kunio Aoki of BEA BID Japan and Song Hu, the BPM expert of China. As I mentioned in my last post this was my first trip to Asia and these guys not only made sure that we didn't have any logistical issues with the training but also made sure that I (and my co-instructor) had a great time. We visited Mount Fuji, the Hakone Jinjya shrine, and a hot spring onsen in Japan and Tienamen Square and the Forbidden City in Beijing. These are all things that I never thought I would see in my lifetime. I was filled with awe to stand in Tienamen Square: a place that was the heart of the ancient Chinese empire, the site of "June 4th Incident" and the resulting turmoil, and the heart of what was once a very foreign and intimidating country to me. (As someone who grew up in the 1970's I still remember "Red China".)

The clickable pictures to the right are from our Tokyo and Beijing training events, respectfully. The first is a class picture after all of the students had presented their final projects. (The training we conducted has a hands on case study lab that is very challenging.) They look very happy to have survived their peer review! The second picture is Song Hu teaching. Since language was more of a barrier in our Beijing class, Song and the rest of the BEA Systems Engineers helped out with a lot of the instruction and translation.

All in all it was very exciting to be bringing the Business Process Management vision to Asia. Although we still think of BPM is as emerging technology in the Americas and Europe, it is truly leading edge in Asia. Being able to present a solution that not only is a leader in the space but also meets all of their localization and internationalization needs, and also has a local team to support them is a powerful message. I have high hopes for AquaLogicBPM in Asia. I'm headed back to my regular job, which is largely US-centric, but will be following up with my hosts to see how BPM can cross this cultural divide.

Posted by davidogren at 11:55 PM in BEA | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us

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