Conferenceing!!

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to go to a conference. This conference happened to be THE conference for people in my field to go to and it also happened to be in Perth. (For those of you that are geographically challenged in Australia, Perth is on the west coast toward the south.) Just getting to this conference was a challenge in itself. I found out about it at the end of Oct, about a month before it was suppose to happen. Immediately after finding out I mentioned it to my boss and he said it should be fine but needed to check with the higher ups. Then he was out of the office for a couple weeks and when I finally managed to catch up with him I found out I needed to fill out this form and send it to Person A. So I did this and by this point it's a little more than a week before I would need to leave for the conference... I didn't hear anything and by the end of week I was getting a bit anxious. After several phone calls and emails on Fri and Mon, I finally got approval at 5pm on Mon to go to this conference at the end of that week. On Tues I booked plane tickets to leave on Wed and a place to stay. Cutting it just a bit close... They really should work on the policy and procedures to get approval to go to a conference.

I had almost 2 days in Perth to wander around and explore. It was a lot of fun and a very pretty city, but rather hot. I would have liked a bit more time there though and especially to have someone to hang out with.

The conference itself was really good. I went there only knowing 2 people and even them I had only met once. There were about 50 people total there and only a couple of those were women and I wouldn't be surprised if I was the youngest there (the average age was probably about 55). I made a lot of contacts though and learned a lot! The tiny conference was a very difference experience to the massive conferences I had been to before. The biggest difference was that all my food was included!! Breakfast, morning and afternoon tea, lunch and dinner. All very very yummy :) I can't wait for the conference next year!! It's going to be near Adelaide.