Home again

Nicole and I are home. We landed last night, here around 7:30pm ish and me around 12:20am ish. Yeah two flights. She booked later than I did, and on a different airline, so that was as close as we could get :(

Both flights didn't suck and weren't too late.

Last week was a whirlwind of activity. Tom and I did our second 360|Flex conference. The only comparison to the first (San Jose) is really that they didn't compare at all. This was our first 'real on our own' effort. Lots of challanges, lots of kudos from attendees and sponsors.

We spent the weekend prior running around doing errands, making 140 welcome baskets, stuffing 350 folders with sponsor materials, making fools of ourselves at a Michael's (we're guys, what else could we do there?)

Sunday night kicked off with a dinner for speakers and sponsors, our way of saying "thanks" to all the great people and companies that helped make the conference a reality and the top of class event it was. Right after that, was another dinner, and party for everyone. Attendees showed up to pick up their shirts, folders, and badges, and enjoy some pizza and beer. We also had a Guitar hero tournament, which was crazy popular.

Monday was day one. Keynote. I'm actually getting less nervous doing those, that's good since 300+ sets of eyes is a lot of people and I'm glad the initmidation is diminishing with each time.

The next three days (Mon-Wed) were a blur. Conference running during the day, parties at night, schmoozing all over the place, making sure to make enough connections for the future events and such.

Wednesday's keynote was our focus on transparency, and community talk. We showed everyone a little bit of what it takes and costs to do a conference (input about 130k or so. output, about 140k or so). We then turned the mic over to a few community projects/companies, building things in Flex, giving them a chance to show off a little, explain their product, or even just give a peak at a session later that day.

After the conference ended, we had a group dinner at the Space Needle. Eh food, but great views, and great company.

Thursday, mom and Portia and Nicole and I hung out in Seattle. We did the underground tour (met Jeff and Tammi from the conference by coincidence), then rode the ducks, then dinner at the hotel.

Friday we drove up to my grandparents, in Brewster. We hung out a bit with them, Nicole hadn't ever met my extended family so that was great! We then headed over to Omak (no kidding, google map it ) for dinner with some of my aunts, uncles, cousins, kids of cousins, etc.

It was great seeing everyone, it's been maybe 5 years or more, since I've seen them, it was kinda bittersweet to leave grandma and grandpa on saturday morning, to head to the airport.

Hopefully our next visit won't be another 5+ year later type of event.

All in all a busy and great! weekend.