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From #13ntc: Stranded…

From #13ntc: Stranded… published on 3 Comments on From #13ntc: Stranded…

It was a lovely conference, even from afar (thanks, Maddie Grant and team, for a great online stream!).

A major storm slammed the Midwest, including my wife’s flight home – which was supposed to arrive around dinner, giving us a few hours together before my red-eye to Toronto and then Minneapolis. Then Alex’s flight home was delayed…and delayed… annnnnnd… cancelled. She got herself on another flight.

Meanwhile, I learned at 8:30 pm that my flight the next morning from Toronto to Minneapolis was also scrubbed. Unable to get through to Air Canada by phone (“Owing to greater than normal call volumes,” normally the bullshit line to end all bullshit lines, was probably true that night), I headed to the airport on spec. Thankfully, the Air Canada ticket agent cheerfully found me another flight – later in the afternoon, but it meant that I finally made it to the Nonprofit Technology Conference, bleary-eyed (I had plenty of company on that score) but intact.

Ticket agents, by the way, put up with a lot of crap for circumstances completely beyond their control. Be nice to them.

And you thought hunger was the best sauce

And you thought hunger was the best sauce published on 2 Comments on And you thought hunger was the best sauce

I have this draft restaurant review in my head that goes something like this:

“The hot new restaurant in town is Air Canada Flight 166, but for the life of me, I can’t understand what the fuss is about. The seating is cramped, intrusive video advertisements play at the beginning of the meal – which is indifferent at best – and, most baffling of all, when I left the restaurant, I was 2,600 kilometres from where I’d parked.”

—

And yep, another iPad cartoon – this one in fact drawn on a plane, on my way to lead a workshop on social media at Persuading to Win 3 in Ottawa. As much as I loved meeting my fellow presenters George Lakoff and Marc Zwelling, this is the kind of conference where at least half the enjoyment lies in seeing old faces. I got to see agenda-mates Elaine Bernard and Sean Moffitt only in passing, and a few other familiar folks from my Toronto and Ottawa days… but the greatest pleasure was spending even a few minutes with Ish Theilheimer and Kathy Eisner. Ish gave me my first full-time job out of university, and he’s been both a mentor and – along with Kathy – a good friend ever since.

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