Well the conference is over and I'm posting from Seattle airport. My flight has been delayed a little and I thought this a good time to try and summarize the trip a little.
I firstly want to apologies for my previous post "Good Morning Seattle", I was deliriously tired while writing that. I had thought about going back and changing it, but it's a little humorous to go back and read so I've left it up.
The trip has been a huge mixture of success and failure. Firstly, our presentation went wonderfully. I really feel that we hit the key points of Shoechicken to great effect, and skipped the uninteresting details. There were so many questions at the end that the session chair had to cut many off due to a lack of time. People seemed genuinely interested, now we just need to get something out there for people to download,
That's the up side of the conference, the down side is that the conference wasn't that great to say the least. There were at most 50-60 people and may of those didn't stay the whole time. Many of the talks were either barely intelligible, or downright awful. There were a few notable exceptions, but I have to say that I will certainly not be coming back next year.
On the up side of things, Seattle has been wonderful. It's reminded me of home a great deal. I got to see the space needle, pike market, the first starbucks, underground Seattle, and many more things. I cannot believe how many coffee shops there are here. It's almost unfathomable that there are that many, particularly the number of starbucks. Not that I'm complaining of course, as a coffee addict it's a big selling point for me. I really liked being able to walk from place to place. Living in Pensacola has pretty much abolished any daily walking I do; outside of downtown people just don't walk places. We've walked well in excess of 10 miles while being here and it's been lovely. The only bad comments I have about Seattle are the number of homeless, and the lack of police presence.
Overall I've enjoyed my trip. In a way more importantly I feel like it's been a huge learning experience. I have taken a great deal from presenting at this conference. Some of which is what to do and some being what not to do. The other side of it being general travel experience. I hadn't realized how inflexible travel packages from places like expedia are. We also ended up with a rental car that we barely used due to the convenience of walking everywhere here.
Well everyone, this is it from Seattle for me, ta ta for now.
