Beer and Curry

Well this is a baptism by fire for me. When i read my schedule at the weekend i assumed that the 7am /10pm start/finish was just the conference activities from registration desk opening to the evening’s entertainment concluding. I hadn’t realised i would actually be on the go for the whole 15 hours. Six hours in and so far i’m lasting the pace.

I don’t know how many people at the conference know about the Netezza UK tradition of Beer and Curry evenings. And i don’t know for sure that’s what inspired the curry banquet tonight but i suspect it did, so for those who don’t know the background let me elucidate...

It’s a tradition that started some years ago, and basically ‘beer and curry' is just an informal and, we hope, convivial get together of Netezza staff, customers and prospective customers for beer and curry. It’s as likely to be wine nowadays and it will be a pretty classy curry (the last one was here) but we remain true to the spirit of informality. When i first met the idea i was amazed that Netezza just lets prospective customers talk to existing customers freely and without intercession from staff. I went to a beer and curry evening before i joined Netezza and it just confirmed i’d made the right decision to escape the DeathStar for a company so sure of its technology that it doesn’t need an army of marketing and sales staff mediating any interaction between customers and prospective customers.

I guess tonight is the same intention writ large and i’m looking forward to it. I’ve eaten curry in a lot of places, including Heston Blumenthal’s favourite curry house, but i’m expecting this to be a bit special.

I'm trying to think of analogies from consumer sales to this idea of customers and prospective customers mixing freely. In retail the stores are all next to each other and they are competing on every sale to build loyalty. Maybe a better example is the insurance industry. I bet not many insurance companies would host an unmediated forum of their customers to direct you to when you requested a quote for new business. Did i just invent Which for the blogosphere? Or is it already out there and i didn't notice?