Foxwoods
I am currently at the Foxwoods Resort and Casino in Mashantucket, CT for an off-site "software strategy" session. We have been here since Monday and leave this afternoon.
Yesterday we spent the day on a boat, hauling to Sag Harbor in the Hamptons on Long Island for lunch and a little site-seeing. It seems the entire event is a race from meal to meal, and I'm going to have a fair amount of running to catch up on when I get home.
"Software strategy" has turned out to be a discussion of existing timelines and initiatives underway, not with a critical eye, but more logistically. To quote a colleague, we should be spending the time figuring out what our software business should be when it grows up. However, we are mired in detail to formulate responses to much more tactical questions we are receiving from the rest of company such as how many people we need supporting each product, what our release dates will be, etc. I am biting my tongue a bit because, as the fairly new guy, I am not in a position to rock the boat too much, but I am challenging where I can without being overly annoying (e.g. a statement that a customer could build our software in-house at a lower cost than licensing from us!).