Busy Week Randomness

I'm finishing up a busy work week - I ran a training session for 15 people, which included 9 out of town visitors. Here are my random observations from the week.

1. Who knew standing in front of a group for 6 hours and talking could be so exhausting? While I didn't talk for 6 hours straight, it felt like 8 hours. And I have presented this same training class before - the last time was in 2008. Maybe I'm just getting old.

2. Every opportunity to travel is an opportunity to experience new things - make the most out of it. Three of the attendees traveled here from Tampico, Mexico. I'm sure the flat prairie of Illinois has never made their "must visit" list. But these three embraced the opportunity. Always smiling, they didn't complain about the cold and windy conditions. They had never seen snow before. That is, until Tuesday, when it started falling from the sky. All three ran outside and took photos in the snow. I watched as one of them built a snowman in the parking lot. Even though the big storm caused a disturbance to the session, I'm glad our visitors got to experience something special that they won't soon forget.

3. Meeting face to face reaps benefits that can't be measured in bottom line dollars. Travel dollars in our industry are hard to come by at the individual contributor / engineering level. I was floored when two team members were given approval to travel here from Europe. While we've talked and "met" over numerous teleconferences over the years, it was great to finally meet in person.

4. A last minute change in plans doesn't always spell disaster. I'll admit to being a bit of a control freak - I like to have things well planned. When Tuesday's snow storm became eminent, we had to change plans and reschedule Wednesday's session. It all worked out in the end, perhaps for the better.

5. Running in freshly fallen snow rocks. I've probably mentioned that before, but I got a reminder of that experience on Wednesday morning.

This week's photo - a hotel atrium - we moved our training session to this location due to the storm. It was much nicer than the 70's era conference room we were originally scheduled to use.