Boston love

Hello from somewhere up in the air between Boston and Chicago. I don't always like to blog about what I'm up to ahead of time because, well, this IS the internet. And while I have the hardest time ever imagining that any "bad guys" would ever find me - or find me attention-worthy if they did - it still probably not a bad idea to be a tad bit cautious. Right? I suppose my tweet updates saying "hi from Boston" might mean I come home to a robbed apartment... but it would have to be someone who knows pretty well who I am. And in that case, well, mi casa es su casa. Make yourself at home and take some some frozen venison from the freezer while you're there - it's good stuff and I'd like to make sure it's appreciatively used before this hunting season comes around!


So, Boston. Boston played host to a huge conference this week on Microsoft Sharepoint. My co-worker friend Wendy and I got to go because they say you always install Sharepoint twice: the second time because you screwed it up so badly the first time. Wendy and I went to try to prevent just that scenario: hopefully to save our organization thousands (if not hundreds of thousands - literally!) in rework and employee frustration. What is Sharepoint? Jeepers. It's basically a software platform that allows you to do all sorts of web based things. Document management, content management, workflow automation (think getting away from paper-based forms and processes), searchability, reportability, and electronic collaboration and knowledge sharing. It will be SO COOL if we do well, and SO NOT COOL if we don't.


All the above meant that the two of us really kept our noses to the grindstone for the three days of the conference. (Except, of course, when we paused to get my photo taken with a random vendor dressed as a ninja. You know, the usual.) As we stayed in the hotel that hosted it, we probably wouldn't have known we were anywhere in particular until we actually ventured into the city on Saturday. Ok, ok, we did make it to Legal Seafood Thursday night (golly was it lovely to have good lobster!). That almost counts, doesn't it?


Saturday found us trucking downtown on the subway, taking the Freedom Trail - first with a guide, then on our own - stopping for lunch at Cheers (even though nobody knew our names... k, sorry for that!), wandering around historic houses, burial grounds, and churches, and then meandering a bit out around Harvard just to see what that was all about.


All in all? I liked it! I liked it a lot. Both of us talked about how much we'd like to come back again when there'd be better opportunity to see and experience more.
And now for re-entry! We both have mountains of work to catch up on as well as the challenge of assimilating all this mad Sharepoint stuff into how we move forward. No problem, right?!