Opera Software University Tours

Opera Tour USA members included Anne van Kesteren, Phillip Gronvold, Jason Chartrand, and Lawrence Eng, with special appearances by Jon S. von Tetzchner.

The Fun Stuff
• Introducing our CEO, Jon S. von Tetzchner, to students and other guests at Stanford and SF State. He took time to give talks in between multiple meetings and press interviews. What a rock star!

• Driving Jon to dinner in SF right after his talk was 'exciting'. We got him there safely, but our gas tank was nearly empty (the warning light was on as soon as we started driving).

• Pizza at three schools, but Thai food at Berkeley. Berkeley's always different...

• Students (both male and female) were super enthusiastic about our exclusive Opera t-shirts, made by our friends at Moods of Norway.

• Speaking of Norway, one of the students at Berkeley is on student exchange from the University of Agder in Kristiansand and he "wishes to see Opera Software visit and hold a presentation for our students in Kristiansand".

• The students at SJSU were very glad to have speakers visit who had technical backgrounds. One student there mentioned that they mostly get (non-technical) recruiters visiting their university. One such recruiter from a tech company was asked by a computer science student what "languages" applicants ought to know for their internships, and the recruiter replied "English"....Oops!

Lawrence's Highlights (So Far)
"Giving a talk on Opera and the mobile Web at Cal Poly...Our original speaker had an emergency to take care of, so I stepped in to do the talk, which was a lot of fun (and a little nerve-wracking because I had to prepare the talk during the car trip from Mountain View to San Luis Obispo). Bonus: introducing Anne van Kesteren (our other speaker) to breakfast at Burger King during the same trip. I'm not sure he was impressed..."

Jason's Highlights (So Far)
• The look on Anne's face during lunch in Mountain View when his HUGE plate of enchiladas arrived. "This is lunch right?"

• Being in the US during a very important political race.

• When Phillip demoed small screen rendering on Opera Desktop, one student screamed "OH, SNAP!"

• Phillip explained the technology behind Opera's MAMA and I heard one student say "Oh man, that's bad ass."

• Remembering how to drive again .

• The drive from SF and San Luis Obispo was very nice with many beautiful mountains along the way.



We are all very tired, but we'll recover over the weekend in time for Week 2 down south!

- Written by Lawrence and Jason