I'm not dead... yet!

Figured I'd do a post to wrap up my last few weeks since they've been a bit silent.

February 25-27 was 360|Flex Atlanta, the third event my company has organized. The first to turn a profit, albeit small. w00t!!

Tom (business partner) and I landed Friday, met with our hotel rep, ran some errands, etc. We spent the weekend, stuffing folders, copying files to USB drives, tracking packages, stuffing and alphabetizing badges, buying a PS3, blah blah blah.

Sunday was our free hands on "Flex 101" session all day. It was a huge hit. We planned for 50, and had 80 people show up. It was also early badge pickup, which always helps make Monday morning less  hectic. Word of advice, copying files to a 1gb USB drive, is SLOW, you can't do it on the fly. Lesson learned.

Sunday night we had our Speaker Sponsor dinner ( our way of thanking them), followed by welcome reception for attendees. If you're in the ATL hit Stats up. good food, sweet atmosphere, all around great place!

Monday was keynote one, where Tom and I say hello, thanks for coming, make a few announcements, corrections, etc, then hand off to Adobe to wow the audience. We had the pleasure of being the launch event for Flex 3 and AIR 1, which kicked ass!

Monday night's party was Adobe's and it was good. Tom and I under planned for food (that happens when you have your reg numbers swell over 100% in 30 days) but otherwise it was a good time.

Tuesday, no keynote. Tuesday is our Day of Rest i suppose. it's the only "normal" day at the conference. The party was hosted by two of the bigger Flex shops in the game, both local to Denver, neat! Was a great party, and when the beer budget ran out, both sponsors split the tab and "re-opened" the bar! Gotta love that.

The Wednesday keynote is my favorite. It's when Tom and I practice what we preach, transparency and conversation. We give a mid level review of expenses and income, showing what food, A/V, hotel, etc all cost, and what we brought in from attendee tickets, and sponsorships. Like I said above, Atlanta turned a profit. Not much, but at least it shows that our model of doing events isn't flawed. We also explained why we gave out 300 copies of the Cluetrain Manifesto. I'm really glad we did, I think it'll open a lot of eyes. We talked about one of our sponsors who couldn't make it for medical reasons, we talked about one of our sponsors who gave his extra sponsor attendee codes to students and those who couldn't afford to attend.

I think I like the Wednesday keynote the most because it's the one people talk about. It's the one people come up to us after and thank us for our openness and transparency. "No other conference gives that info out" get's said a lot on Wednesday. I like that, because I'm hopeful that it leads to change. The conference (tech mainly, but I'm sure it extends to freezer food, and cabbage patch kids too) industry is so corrupt and greedy that it needs change.

So that was up thru the 27th. Week ain't even over! Normally after an event Tom and I return home and enjoy some time not thinking about conferences. Not this time!

Thursday we cleaned up, packaged and sent off boxes of "stuff" to our homes, sent the stand for our big board back to it's home, had breakfast with the hotel reps (great ladies!).

At 5:30 we were on a plane bound for Milan, Italy. Sight of 360|Flex Europe, which was taking place just over a month away. The good thing about the flight to Milan, was that it was only 8 hours, and was through the night. We landed at 10:30 in the morning, slept most of the night, and weren't completely whacked out.

We had exactly 1 and 1/2 days in Milan. After training, then tubing to the hotel we met our hotel rep, Carla, who showed us the venue, talked about catering, etc., then it was nap time, LOL. We went out that night for dinner near the Duomo, which by the way is SWEET!

Saturday was just sightseeing, planning etc. Tom and I talked over plans for the conference, ways to get numbers up, etc. Then we went back to the Duomo for official sightseeing.

Sunday morning we Tubed, then Trained, back the Malpensa Airport and were on our 11 hour and some change, flight back to Atlanta. That flight sucked! Mainly because it was all daylight, we left at 10am(ish) and landed in ATL at 4pm(ish) do and then still had a 3 hour (for me, 6 for Tom) flight home. So all in all Sunday was SUPER LONG.

To wrap it all up, the persistent cough I had when I was in Atlanta, and Milan, turned into a full bore cold moments after walking in the front door to the house.... weak!

So that was my week, last week.