Whew! Just got back from a convention. It seems like I have attended at least two a year for the last few decades. After all these years, it’s time to report on a few of the things that are mandatory about a convention.
It doesn’t matter what you do or where you go there is the little matter of travel. Fun is never really mentioned in convention travel. Once you arrive at a convention, you have to start complaining about the travel involved. You can pick whatever mode of transportation you want but something is going to put the travel in the complaint category. This last convention was almost 400 miles away. In fact I drove 807 miles in the course of two days. Immediately, the first person I see at the convention tells me about the trouble he had getting to the convention. It’s the regular stuff. I got lost, I missed the turn, flat tires, gps wouldn’t work, kids got car sick, I put the wrong address in the gps, construction held up traffic, got a ticket, I dreading the trip back, and of course we had to back track because we left a suitcase on the back porch. That added almost one hundred mile to the trip.
Even the people that flew had delayed flights, missing luggage, rental car troubles, and the final realization that the travel start time is when you leave the house. An hour drive to the airport, parking, two hours of waiting to get checked in and onto the flight, picking up luggage, rental car getting to hotel and it takes all day no matter where you go. It takes a while to get anywhere.
With the first round of complaints out of the way, let’s start round two. You have to check in to the hotel. “Do you have a reservation?” “Your room will be ready soon.”
Now the fun starts. At registration you start seeing your friends and talking about your good adventures since the last time you were at the convention. Joke telling begins and once you get on your nametag on, you start making new friends. This might be the best part of any convention. Seems like that is the real reason for attending a convention. Learning, re-certification, or any other reason seems to be secondary to the fun of seeing old friends. This carries over to vendors, speakers, teachers, presenters or organizational representatives. Personal news, business news, new news and old news comes out and you start learning abut what’s new and what is getting ready to change for good or bad. That is the reason why you came.
Then it is time for a little bit of bad news. You find out why some people are not there. Sickness, bad luck or death always put a damper on visiting a convention too.
The vendors and sales people are pushing hard to sell something in the first few minutes of the convention and you’re trying to pace yourself and not spend all your money the first day. Well, the convention is over and now you’ve had fun and fellowship and a little bit of sad news. The last day wraps up with fun and the fact that you can’t have as much fun as you had years ago. The fun usually out weighs the complaint but there is one complaint left.
You have to travel back home. “I’d rather take a beating than (drive, fly, get on the bus, stay in the car four hours, get in that traffic) you can use any of those sayings.”
It usually doesn’t take but a day to get over the complaints and be ready to attend next year. There will be a year to plan your different travel plans. Next year I’m flying, driving over two days, staying in a different hotel, not eat as much, not bring so much luggage, skip the convention altogether.
