Building Customer Relations... on the Soccer Field

On a recent project in Guangzhou, China, I had an opportunity to join a soccer outing with guys from our client's factory.

Ok, so maybe it wasn't a FIFA World Cup caliber match, but we had a great time pitting the engineering department versus the operations and materials departments.

It was a great way to take advantage of the warm weather in late November and to get out after a long week commissioning a batch reporting system.

I was there to install a .NET application to capture buffered batch data from an existing PLC and transfer it into an SQL 2008 database. SQL Reporting Services served as the web-based interface for browsing, viewing, downloading, and printing reports.

The team in Guangzhou is not only great to work with, but very hospitable. We had a lot of fun bonding in fierce competion on the turf short-court under the lights. Those guys are good!