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Conference Blogging

So blogging has been decidedly light. I'm in Denver wheezing my way through our conference set up. Registration starts today, so I'm going to be working my butt off, and trying my best to help create a good experience for everyone who's coming. It should be fun.

We're staying at the brand new Hyatt in Denver. It's very nice and the service--from a guest's perspective--is unbelievable. The hotel is 37 stories tall and two banks of elevators, one that covers thru floor 17, and the other skips that and heads to the higher floors. Now, our president's suite is on 37 and so I ran up there a couple of times yesterday. The elevator is sooo fast that it kind of makes you woozy. And when you come down you have to swallow to make your ears pop. Wild. Also, re the elevators, each elevator has a flat-panel monitor put in it that's like got some live photography on it, and it changes all the time. One scene is a field of sunflowers during an approaching thunderstorm, and the audio is set to play the thunder approaching. Here is the view from my window on the 16th floor:


Then, last night I ordered room service and here is what the apple pie looked like:



But anyway, that's enough travelogue for now. I am currently working on reading The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, by Henry Mintzberg. It's really good, but I'm only halfway through. The main takeaway that I've got from it right now is that we put so much energy (i.e. money) into strategic planning and there's not much evidence that it WORKS. Scary, huh? How very practical to actually examine whether something is working or not.

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