Thursday, August 21, 2008

Daily Highlights:

• Regular conference began today - yesterday was pre-conference workshops.  So there's more people here.

 

• They ran out of bagels at the morning continental breakfast.  Not sure what "continent" this breakfast was for.  Free Starbucks will always soothe my morning "no bagel" crankiness, though...

 

• Went to my first session to scope out "the competition."  It was titled "Prospect Management and Metrics" and presented by a gal from U of Chicago.  She was a pretty good presenter, but the content was a tad dry (you can only look at so many variations of "dashboard reports") and she only filled 35 minutes of a 90 minute session.  There was a 25 minute Q&A period as a result.  Made me feel a little better about my ability to distinguish my presentation from hers.  If nothing else, I can probably be funnier than her (heck, being bald is funny enough, right?).

 

• Had a great everything bagel with Christine between sessions.  We did a "seed check" to ensure neither of us had poppy seeds in our teeth before heading off to the next session.

 

• My second session was "The Evolution of Document Imaging."  I went to this 'cause we're thinking of doing this at UW, but also because one of the presenters is one of Susan's "APRA boyfriends" - Rob Scott from MIT.  He didn't really present.  Good think Susan wasn't here.  One interesting point in this session was the impetus that prompted MIT to move to scan their donor files - a burst pipe threatened to destroy them.  Scanning the documents enables disaster recovery.  That's a good thing since we live in an earthquake prone area.  Also interesting is that they did not purge their files prior to scanning, even though they paid their vendor on a per image basis.  Apparently they didn't have (or take?) the time to do this; though they didn't apparently keep things like gift receipts or thank you notes.

 

• Saw a fire truck go by out the window of my 2nd session.  Denver has white fire trucks.  Not sure what I think of that...
  

 

• The Annual Luncheon and Business meeting took up the lunch hour (and more).  Jen gathered together several APR-NW researchers and we all occupied a table.  We also were able to round up Tim Weaver.  for those who care, lunch was a salad, followed by some sort of stuffed chicken leg with rice pilaf and carrots, and washed down by a nice chocolate decadence cake with berries.  The business meeting, well, it would fall under the "practical alternatives to work" heading.