Day One

Right, Day One. This gig starts early, as you know. As in 7:00 am. Allison is more of a morning person than I could ever claim to be, and she doesn't even drink coffee. Clearly, this makes her a mutant. I kid!

That, up there, is what it's like first thing in the morning. And it got a lot louder. Like Rhianna louder. And then the LoCash Cowboys came out and played country music. I nearly died, and not in a good way.

The intro session was actually quite good -- funny speakers, much ooh'ing and ahh'ing from we the people. Oh, haha, the key speaker's name was Chip Heath. We liked him -- great blend of humor and message in his speech. He also made excellent use of gifs in his powerpoint presentation.

The sessions were quite good as well and we made good use of some free time at the Solutions Pavilion annoying people and scoring toys. Allison and I are planning to debrief on the plane (oh, won't our seatmate heart us) so we can share our knowledge with you all via a mind meld.

Then this evening... Nash Vegas, over in the Opry... something or other. We picked our way across parking lots and lawns in the dark until we found it, realizing only then that we could have walked through the hotel to reach the same destination. No, we were not drunk.

I submit for your approval videos and photos of the party. In case you were wondering (and I know you were) there were Elvises present. That's right, Elvis in plural. We had a Rock Elvis, A Skinny Vegas Elvis, and A Fat Debauched Vegas Elvis. They were fun and made for some entertaining Accountants Gone Wild.

Here's FDVE doing a bit of dancing.

FDVE was breaking... and the Accountants turned on him. He was all right in the end. We spotted him at the bar doing shots.

There was line dancing, always a big hit. Ooooh, I got to do some kind of Cotton Eye Joe dancy thing for a minute. I have video but the wifi connection in this room is poor and won't let me upload. *sob*

Allison with FDVE and SVE.

More with the Elvises. These guys love their jobs.

See ya'll tomorrow.

Oh, hai, Nashville.

Aaaaand here we are, in Nashville. We got in yesterday, actually, but I haven't had time to blog. There's no app for the iPhone, apparently. *eyeroll*

Logan at sunrise. Earrrrrrrrrrrly.

So, let's see... fairly uneventful travel. We connected in MD through BWI and I did nearly manage to kill several people trying to stuff my suitcase into the overhead bin. A very well meaning but misguided gentleman tried to "help" me and instead sent the suitcase flying too far to the left. Nice to hear a loud chorus of "OOOOOHS" from the fellow passengers. Then I got the stinkeye from the guy sitting below said overhead bin because I was in his personal space. Maybe get up and help out or get out of the way there, tough guy.

The hotel is, as you know from last year's stories massive. Like ridiculous massive and we've gotten turned around several times.

I'll post photos and vids from Day One in a moment.

Beer. I had one with lunch because nearly killing people with my luggage takes a lot out of me.

Nash Vegas

12 hours of travel. Yep, 12 hours to get from Boston to Nashville. Yee-flipping-ha. Cathy assures me she spent 9 hours Sunday traveling the same route. Suffice to say that Nashville is not the easiest place to get to.

The hotel is ridiculously large. I believe the hotel shuttle driver threw out some absurd number like 25 acres. The hotel shuttle itself was ridiculously large -- it was the type of bus you normally see transporting rock bands cross country. One of the passengers remarked that the bus was much nicer and possibly larger than the plane she flew earlier in the day. There is also a honky-tonk just nearby that serves excellent BBQ. I just want to go to a honky-tonk, period, don't care what the serve.

Cathy claims that she walked 2 miles to find a coffee kiosk this morning... only to discover that it was closed. She promptly interrogated a hapless hotel employee who directed her to a second kiosk... another 2 miles away. Apparently, Cathy's expression was sufficiently, er, animated to prompt the hapless hotel employee to volunteer to walk her to the second kiosk. Cathy declined the escort. She did manage to score some joe.

My plane seemed to suffer a power failure, as in all lights went out and everything became eerily quiet. Happily, this occurred just as we pulled up to the jetway in Nashville. I thought for a moment that we'd need to use the inflatable emergency slides to deplane, which would have made this, officially, the best. trip. EVER. Sadly, we were forced to deplane using the jetway like regular mortals.

I haven't actually seen Cathy, by the way, because I checked into my room at 9:30 pm and she was no doubt catching up on her television watching. We'll catch up over breakfast tomorrow and Cathy can tell me (again) that I eat as much as a man. Dang, now I'm thinking about the dinner I skipped. Breakfast will be EPIC.

Day 3, pre-DCA

Day 3 is winding down, tho, sadly, the smell of boiled Maryland crab and Old Bay lingers pretty much wherever we go. Allison, Jenn, and I are sitting in the atrium of the hotel waiting for Karen to finish her last session and then it's off to DCA we go.

Wherever I've gone today I've heard stories about the fairly epic levels of partying last night. After 10 pm, lots of people went upstairs to the hotel's disco (that's right, we're calling it a disco) the Sky Bar, and things went on til at least 2:30 am. There's a tale of some man who lost some kind of bet and was then forced to wear a navy blue Deltek sweater vest with no shirt underneath; sadly, I didn't see him last night or I would have chased him around with my camera.

Accountants Gone Wild

Tonight was the big party, Celebrate Insight, and it was, as always, a lot of fun -- good food, lots of loud music, and, as Karen pointed out, a lot of accountants letting their hair down.

Crabs. Lots of 'em.

Crab wranglers

Click play -- sound definitely suggested.

These are for Britt, especially

Which of the GovWin Girls rode the mechanical surfboard and, prior to understanding exactly what the thing did, declared "I don't care what it is, I'll go on it..."?

Beer and Haagen-Dazs FTW

Dancing Karens

Cha-cha'ing

Making friends in the lobby. Bit waxy.

Oh, and in case you were interested, hotel engineering had to come up, haul the fool safe out of the armoire and drill holes in it to basically break in and rescue the laptop -- over an hour of waiting and working on it total. They left a new safe behind that I am avoiding. Sheesh.

breaking bad

okay, allison and i have been watching different parties of hotel people attempt to get into my safe which i locked this morning and is now, in the words of one of the hotel people, "acting the fool". mind you we could be noshing & boozing it up. hopefully this saga ends soon.

My kingdom for a cow

Medium coffee, Viennese roast... and there is no dairy *anywhere* to add. Moo.

Day 2

It's lunchtime at the Gaylord National and we're refueling over baked stuffed potatoes and chili. Sessions today have been useful, tho Allison wandered in to an Advanced Deployment session and finally called it quits after 30 minutes of talking over integrating Windows security in IIS... I, of course, stayed and enjoyed further talk of Virtual Machines (supported or not) and SQL Report Services. Juicy stuff my friends... no really, it is, and I love it.

Day 1 wrap up

Day 1 is in the bag and it seems we all learned a good deal both useful (at the conference sesssions) and useless (a cell phone next to your hotel keycard will demagnetize it - fun!). Tonight was our free night so we 4 went walking in the chilly evening air looking at menus and getting a bit of fresh air before dinner during which I ate half a cow disguised as a cheeseburger. Tomorrow we start over with (hopefully) recharged brains.

Oi

I'm fairly sure that I was sitting next to a woman who, at last year's conference and during the session I was presenting, uttered a sound like a wounded walrus when I told the attendees that our firm uses Lotus Notes for email.

Day 1, update

We are here, up to our necks in wonders of Deltek, us and 3,000+ of our closest buds. I managed to track down the other GGs over breakfast and from there we went to the keynote address which is, always, quite a production with lots of loud music and flashing lights, etc. Brings me back to my nightclubbing days, though without the cigarette smoke (not mine, generally), cocktails (mine, nearly always), and hideous restrooms (bleh).

The first surprise of the day was a musical number at the opening -- students from the Duke Ellington School sang and danced through a rousing song that was all about 'the best is yet to come', etc. They were quite excellent though their youthful energy and abundance of talent made me feel very dorky indeed, not really a stretch considering I'd been up since 3:45 am.

Then several speakers, all quite good, including the president of Deltek, and reps from several Deltek customers including the firm that built the new Dallas Cowboys stadium which, truly, is amazing and a bit disgusting in it's redundant hugeness. Finally, Dave Barry, the humorist/author/etc., arrived and spent at least 45 minutes being incredibly random and really very funny -- Allison and Karen N were wiping away tears of mirth, and Jenn and I did a fair amount of chuckling on our own. 

All in all, I'd have to say that Dave Barry's speech reminded me all too strongly of some books that my kiddo has become entranced with, all of which begin with offering an animal some food and that gesture going 9 million different ways into random activity.  If you're not familiar with what I'm talking about, let me suggest "If You Give A Moose A Muffin," which is, thus far, certainly my favorite of the bunch. Wait, where am I going with this... ah well.

Insight 2010... obscene earliness

First day of Deltek Insight 2010. Or it will be once the sun comes up. It's 4:47 am and I'm waiting to go to the airport to catch my flight to WDC to meet up with Allison, Jenn, and Karen. It is really far too early for a human to be awake. And chewing gum. And blogging, for that matter. Interestingly, it turns out that even I don't have much of an appetite at this hour of the morning; I put my yogurt back in the fridge uneaten. All bets are off by the time 6:00 am rolls around, though. Oh, the cabbie is a bit early, bless him. Off to Logan.

Day 1 Recap

Day 1 at Insight 2009 is behind us now and it was a good day, by all accounts. After breakfast, we started the day by attending the huge general session which started with a fairly cool 3D presentation (hence the glasses above) and moved right into the business of kicking everything off. Some awards were presented, and two guest speakers trotted out to make impressions in very different ways, the first by detailing her company's use of Deltek's accounting software to overhaul the way they go about their business of building more effective artillery for military customers -- she actually trotted out a 3 foot long shell and made a crack about getting stopped at airport security because she told them she was bringing it to the Magic Kingdom. Heh. The second speaker is an astronaut and regaled us with tales of his 5 month stint on the spacestation Mir, including almost losing his life in a fire there. And somehow he's also telling us that his management of a fire in space is like our management of projects here on earth at work. Ummmm... okay, but not really -- as uncomfortable as it can be to have to admit to someone that I can't make GovWin do exactly what they want because of software limitations, I'm not going to suffocate in a tube 250 miles above the earth after I made that admission.

Afterward we attend the a session on Vision where they show us how great version 6 will be and then Cathy and Jenn go one way to have lunch while I wind through this ridonculously large hotel to allow Deltek to videotape me talking about GovWin and how we use it at CS. Went well, though I was overcome by a fit of the itchies about halfway through and had to scratch my nose a few times -- the video guy nicely tells me they won't use that part, haha and YAY.

Next another session and then, finally, DUN DUN DUN, I get to present. It all goes pretty well, actually, I don't choke on water or drool or forget my slides or accidentally use profanity, though I did say both "heck" and "sucked" -- afterward at a cocktail party, the Deltek dude that was in the room during the presentation told me that both were totally fine contextually and that he thought it went very well. There are 8 or 10 people attending, they all stay the whole way through and ask me questions during and after and seem to think I know what I'm talking about. The funniest thing that happens is that, in the midst of answering a question, I mention we don't use Outlook at CS so someone asks what we do use for email. Of course, I tell them Lotus Notes and a woman in room makes this noise:

I mean, really? Come on, it's EMAIL, not porn. The Deltek dude even laughed about it afterward, hehe.

Anyway, on to Day 2.

Conference Eve update

All went well yesterday and last night, though (of course) we were not without some moments of drama and hilarity.

Cathy and I arrived at the Marriott and began checking in which is when we discovered that whomever had arranged the booking for the hotel rooms had me down for just one night -- I thought Cathy's eyes were going to fall out of her head. However, things were righted swiftly and we whisked our bags up to our room and then set out in search of a late lunch... only to find that the restaurant we wanted to eat in was closed for lunch and directing us to the food court. The food court looked a bit bleak and Cathy was NOT in the mood to look further so, with a bit of grumbling, we placed an order for some sandwiches and sat down. The grumbling continued until my number was called and I returned with a very attractive (and tasty) meal at which point things started looking up. Then Cathy nearly had a cardiac event when she perceived that the woman in front of her in line had taken the "Last French Fries" -- I offered to share my fries but decided after getting the look of death to shut up and eat. All was set right when Cathy's number was called and she found her FFs in the bag with her burger. We ate, our blood sugar levels surged, all was right with the world, and so we split up to go unpack.

Jenn Nelson arrived and called to let me know she'd made it, and we all agreed to meet at 6:30 to head over to the 2nd hotel for the reception. And then I heard a crash and realized it was thundering around a torrential downpour. No biggie, as I was ironing... until I heard my phone chime and looked to see a text message from Jenn. Turns out it was raining in her room as well -- the downpour was splashing onto her balcony and then INTO her room. The maintenance guys she summoned told her they'd get a wet vac; Jenn however, preferred to switch rooms and was moved.

At 6:30 we meet in the lobby and traipse over to the Gaylord Palms for the reception where we are greeted with... carnival food...? Now, I watch No Reservations and Bizarre Foods, so I am all about trying new things, as is Jenn. Plus, I know that it's at least some kind of familiar food and not iguana fajitas or cobra hearts or even durian fruit. Cathy, however, is much less adventurous, as we know, and actually rather dislikes "gimmicky" foods, so we proceed with caution which quickly turns to gusto. Jenn and I try our first corndogs, ever, and then discuss funnel cake (neither of us has tried it) over the be-sticked meat, some hush puppies, and a little mac-n-cheese. We find a table, and nosh, but Cathy cannot be persuaded to try the corndog, tho she also has never had one. We move on to some sloppy joes, but skip the nacho bar, and somehow I end up with 3 Hostess Fruit Pies and a bag of cotton candy in my bag, which I haul back to the table while gnawing without shame on a candy apple coated with red dye #3.

By 8:30 pm, we decide to head back to the hotel and skip the Guitar Hero contest that is taking place on a 50-foot screen at the other end of the pavilion -- tomorrow, after all, is another day. So I hand over the pies that are not mine and we all say good night.

Off to conference!

Cathy and I are sitting in Starbucks Coffee (believe it or not, Cathy chose Starbucks over Dunkin' b/c of the seating arrangements) waiting for our flight to board. Cathy's new sneakers are killing her already, plus she just claimed to have started the ziploc bag craze adopted by the TSA. "I think I started that," she said, and then told me a story about the TSA guys gathering around her to examine her ziploc bags full of toiletries several years ago.

Cathy got up at 4:40 am and was here at the airport by 7:40 am, driven by the most rickety cab in all of Massachusetts. Cab driver was nice, though. Big dude, but nice. And Cathy's hair was blowing in the wind -- she's dying laughing right now b/c she also had to push the Starbuck's table back so she could put her feet on the floor.

I woke up at 5:40 am and was at the airport by 7:40 am. Of course, I live a lot closer.

Updates to follow, hold down the fort (Cathy says) and OK, BYE.