Café Detail, Cairo

Dd has captured this before while I usually sail past with an unprimed iPad! Not today!

My meeting yesterday went ahead . . . by a whisker . . . it was a historic event, a first meeting if its kind in this particular program and I wrote an email to bring my colleagues up to date with what had happened...names have been changed...not the usual kind of email, but who cares . . . I will eat a peach and walk upon the beach!

'I can't quite believe it happened! Here's what I remember . . .. I criss-cross Cairo all weekend in cramped, beat-up taxis with my laptop perched on my knees in search of decent wifi. Managers of the business centres in the best hotels stand beside me as I run the speed tests . . . 'The man from Ookla says 'No' ', I say. 'Sorry!' My laptop is back in its cover before they can offer me a discount and I'm out on the streets again. The Marriott comes up with 9 mbps up and down, three times the platform requirements...'That'll do nicely!'

So far so good. And then participants begin to drop like flies - all in the 24 hours before 'wheels up'! First, it's Susan from Abu Dhabi (an important meeting), then Elena from Barcelona ( a conference to organise) and just a few hours before take-off, Angela from Cameroon (her first board meeting). I pause for thought - should I pull the whole thing or hope that the invisible Jordi who has never shown up to anything appars to make us quorum? Push on...honour the commitment of those who show!

I work out how to create the agenda in the far-from-intuitive platform of the supplier. I save it. I check to see it's still there when I reopen the site. It is. I come back into it 30 minutes before launch having done the final reboot and the entire 8-page agenda with timings has disappeared. I glance at my watch - 20 minutes to go - there's time to redo it - most of it is still lodged in my head...I begin typing. A ping....Bill has arrived in the platform a few minutes early. Another ping and Alvaro also appears . . . and that's it. All, tout, tot!

'Well, it's like this,' I explain. 'We are who we are - very few - and we can either press ahead or retreat.' We share the pros and cons of pressing ahead. The cons win. I look at the clock on screen and see it says 16.02 - two minutes past official start time. 'Listen,' I say, 'We should really give everyone at least until 16.05 to come in - anyone can be a little late and that includes [no-show] Jordi.' The clock turns to 16.03 and PING! Heeeeeeeeeeeere's Jordi!

'Shall we start?', I say. And we did!