BlogPhiladelphia is a wrap

After working for 21 hours yesterday, I was not up for another social event, so I hopped an earlier train and skipped the wrap party. I hope it was as fun as the "work" session at Triumph Brewery Thursday night.

In no particular order, here some thoughts on the event.

Annie Heckenberger totally rocks. This was a fairly complex event and as far as I could tell, it all went off without a hitch. Not to mention all the free beer. Really, I have never been to a conference where the major social events all provided free beer. I'm used to getting raped at conferences because everybody assumes you are on an expense account. In Philadelphia, they hand out free beer.

The beer at Triumph Brewery is most excellent. I sampled the Stout, IPA, and Witbeer and all 3 were fantastic. I would have liked them at full price too.

The unconference format is quite productive. I spent a lot of time in engaging, interesting conversations. So much so that by noon today I was pretty much drained. I met a lot of really cool people. I'm going to refrain from listing them though, because I know I'll miss somebody inadvertently. If you weren't advocating text link spamming in my paid blogging session, you can assume you are on the cool list.

I like downtown Philadelphia. Very Boston like. I hope that doesn't offend anybody in Philly, but Boston is the only old NE city that I have spent any significant time in. And I like Boston. I would love to get back up to Philly with the family before the Tut exhibit goes away on 9/30. I'll have to look into Amtrak family specials. Maybe it would be cheaper after Labor Day? Or maybe we'll just drive.

The recently renovated Radisson is quite spiffy. However, avoid room 705. At 7 AM this morning I about fell out of bed in fear from what sounded like a helicopter landing in the room with me. As I was thinking maybe they went a little overkill on the alarm clock I noticed that turning the alarm clock off did nothing to the noise. It was actually the shower in the room next door. I can't even imagine how water in pipes is getting amplified that much, but it was scary loud. It did ensure that I wouldn't be sleeping through breakfast with Tim Haas from Philadelphia magazine though. He is doing a feature article on me.

I'm kidding about the article.

I'm not kidding about breakfast.