I've landed in the desert

I'd prefer it if we didn't dwell on the fact that I haven't blogged in over 4 months. It would be nice if I could say I had been whisked off on a 4 month African Safari sabbatical... or perhaps living in a beach hut working on my tan but I've been doing neither of those things. I'm not going to tell you that the only thing consuming my time since March has been work... or that I come home in the evenings and feel like collapsing in a heap because my brain is so tired from answering thousands of questions about what kind of concessions I plan on selling at the upcoming show... or that I'm just plum tired.

Let's not dwell on that.

Let's get right to the meat and potatoes of this blog post.

I arrived in Phoenix (as in middle of the desert Arizona) earlier this afternoon for the International Association of Venue Managers (here on out referred to as IAVM) annual conference, Venue Connect. Conferences are great for so many reasons - I really could spend all evening writing about each reason. But for right now, right this very second, at 5:13PM PST, the number one reason this conference is great is because I'm feeling myself recharge. That eager spark that had started to dim while sitting behind my desk, answering question after question for the past year is start to gain some strength. Sure, tomorrow I'll probably tell you that the conference is great for the networking or education, but for right now, it's just that it's fanning the flame.

Last January I wrote one of my favorite blog posts from my hotel room in NYC while there for the APAP conference. My creative side was fed at that conference. I consider the IAVM conference one for the analytical side of my brain. This conference is for the organizational, operational, event logistics geek that lives within me. You know, one cannot live on ice cream sundaes alone, you also need your vitamins and that is what I'm getting this week.

The conference officially started today with a golf tournament (eh, not my thing) and a slew of meetings. Unfortunately, getting here from NWA (as is the same with getting almost anywhere from NWA) took the better part of my day, so I didn't get here quite early enough to sit in on meetings, but I'll kick things off into high gear with a very full day tomorrow. In fact, not to let down the "join every club and volunteer for every activity" person inside of me, I'll be speaking at the First Timers Breakfast. I have a 3 minute "2nd Year Testimonial" to grace the audience with and I'm quite chuffed. I'm hoping that during my 3 minutes, I can help ignite the spark that I'm here to feed.

After all, it was during the breakfast last year that I started to fall in love with my job instead of just having a crush on it.

(this is the first in a series of blog posts written while attending IAVM Venue Connect 2011 - let's see if I can keep this up all week)

follow me on Twitter @WoolyHands and keep up with my conference tweets with a #venueconnect search