I speak a lot, and thus travel a lot. I've learned through the years to use a system I call being "tri-redundant." That means if I'm speaking at a conference on Wednesday afternoon, I book a flight that will get me there the day before. Also, I look at the schedule to select two other flights after that flight, that will still get me there on time for the talk, just in case. Typically, it works great, and a canc I speak a lot, and thus travel a lot. I’ve learned through the years to use a system I call being “tri-redundant.” That means if I’m speaking at a conference on Wednesday afternoon, I book a flight that will get me there the day before. Also, I look at the schedule to select two other flights after that flight, that will still get me there on time for the talk, just in case. Typically, it works great, and a cancelled or delayed flight just means moving to another flight, and even another if needed. While the system has worked well over the last 10 years of public speaking, this week it failed. I had my seminar “SOA Practitioner’s Crash Course” schedule in Nashville on Sunday (yesterday), from 3:15 – 6:15 PM, so I booked the flight out the night before, with two other flights after it just in case. Well, Saturday came with the hangover from Friday’s air traffic system outage, and that flight was a no go. No worries, I’ll catch the flight first thing in the morning. I showed up for that flight only to learn that the captain did not show up, thus the flight was cancelled. When attempting to get on the other flight, it was so overbooked from Saturday’s cancellations they would not even let me stand-by for it, and none of the connections would get me there on time. Thus, I did not make it there, and thus did not deliver the seminar yesterday. Not much you can do, other than to get frustrated and mad at yourself, the airline, and circumstances. The largest issue was the people who showed up on Sunday specifically to attend the course, and were told I was not showing up. I plan on catching up with most of them this week to apologize in person…I’m sure it was aggravating for them. I would have been the loudest complainer, were it me. Gartner, was very professional about the whole thing, albeit I’m sure not happy about the situation as well. Long story/short. Garter rescheduled the seminar for Tuesday. I’m actually doing two sessions to work around the other content. Thus, if you’re at the event now, could not make it to Sunday’s session, and would like to attend….please see the Gartner Reps at the Nashville site. I plan on knocking it out of the park. Software Development