Diego Berrueta

I'm writing today from Cannes, or more precisely, from Mandelieu, where I'm attending to the W3C Technical Plenary. I came here to give a couple of talks. Today I had the opportunity to describe some work that we have been doing at CTIC. When I concluded my slides, I engaged in a very interesting discussion with some people from the audience, including Ivan Herman and TimBL. It is rewarding to see that these experts are interested by our work. Tomorrow I'll give a sort presentation about a successful semantic web application we did at CTIC.

We're meeting at the Royal Casino (if you want a martini, you have to order it shaken, not stirred -- just kidding). The venue is ok, but I think the location is not. It is not well-communicated to the airport. Anyway, I stay in a nearby, much more economic, hotel. It's funny that, although I'm surrounded by luxury cars, huge yachts, golf courses, casinos, etc., my hotel has a "limited glamour". Frankly, it's not the best hotel I've been to. Surprisingly, there are cats inside the hotel, and also some nasty bugs. But it's cheap and it has a free wifi! Maybe other, more expensive hotels should take note.

This afternoon, I walked across the city while looking for some place to have dinner. Mandelieu is not a beautiful city, but they have a nice castle. Probably other nearby cities, such as Cannes and Nice, are more interesting. Actually, this is my second time around Cannes. The first one was in 1996, if I remember correctly, and I only stopped here for some minutes.