Right so get yourself a digestive biccie and a nice cup of cocoa as I wax lyrical on some time in the Lowlands of Scotland. For those of you from an international bent, this is where I was for the last few days:

http://maps.live.com/?q=edinburgh&mkt=en-gb&FORM=L...

Both myself and the product manager for HPC were up speaking with 6 or 7 partners all working around the topics of HPC and one a last minute addition around Search. Some of the things that struck out at me were the following:

• The Innovation in the Scottish market and the support from the government offered for technology businesses - http://www.icass.co.uk/fundinginnovationspur.html 
• The tremendous business experience in the region - lots of entrepreneurs who have been in Silicon Valley and returned to Silicon Fen with the same spirit for technology and changing the norms of social interaction (reminded me of our own Blue Monster crusade inside of Microsoft Blue Monster)
• I won’t bore you about all the businesses and people we saw but leave you with one personal meaningful experience of a partner who told me about his friend who is currently suffering from Leukaemia and using technology to share with the world his story, you can read about Douglas' gritty story here: http://www.paynehq.com (NB: not for those who are easily offended) Some goodies will be on their way Douglas and best of luck from me

Fantastic few days, great experience and great people - best of luck to you all. Now I know some of you will be saying what was the learning from Google - well, I will share that with you when I and we have completed our discussions – wouldn’t want to go off half cocked now would I :-)

Thanks to James and Rayo in the Scottish Office for all your help!

Enjoy!