Had an opportunity to visit Bangalore and also checkout the SAP conference in India. Having not checked out any other Metro lately and also heard so much about Bangalore the expectations were very high. And boy, what a let down it turned out to be. My plane touched down at 7:45 AM and as I had naively planned, I thought I had more than enough time to reach before the keynote at 9:15 AM. Well, in the crazy traffic it was only after 10:30 that I reached the center. At one point the traffic was standstill for such a long time that the driver got down, went to a roadside vendor to get a banana, ate it and came back to find nothing had moved. Then came the climax, folks started driving on the other side of the road which kind of freaked me out.
The conference seemed like a money making business. 5000+ folks turned out. The center was not at all geared for that kind of mob. The classrooms were temporarily put together. Each one had capacity of about 150 and more than 500 folks wanted to get in. So huge lines before the sessions. Only one toilet and couple of portables for 5000 folks and so on. So either these conferences are always this way in India or I am spoilt due to the facilities in the USA.
Content wise 50% of the stuff seemed good. That’s a pretty good number for a SAP conference. Audience though seemed heavily in the 20 something age range which was surprising to me.
Traffic was a constant nag as it took us hour plus each way to get to our hotel which was 7 km away. On the last day spent some time with a friend and asked him to drive us around. On a weekend day we were in the car for 40 + minutes for 2 KMs and then I gave up. I guess either it was Murphy’s law for me or the infrastructure there has totally crumbled as I keep hearing from folks.
Positives from the trip:
The hotel was really nice. Luxury in India is far better than the US in the same class
Met some friends and enjoyed the Indian hospitality
Appreciate Hyderabad all the more. From whatever short time I spent there I don’t think I would recommend Bangalore.
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