Re: COMMON Conference locations.

This may have been mentioned before...
One year a few co-workers and I got to go to the San Antonio COMMON
conference.  The hotels were mostly within walking distance if you
hustled. You had to carefully prepare your own schedule for potential
backup sessions because so many were not at all what you expected. Is
the backup one close enough to run over to it and get a seat?
So many of us got to go (I'm guessing about 20% of the staff including
operations) because our director (Tony Chadwick at Porsche Cars NA -
Reno at the time) took that opportunity to give us a treat. It was the
only way to fit it into the budget and get us some education at the
time. San Antonio was a beautiful location.
The neatest part was that a few of us took in the prior weekend and
stayed the one after, too. We booked alternate (cheaper) hotels for our
own time. Two of our husbands flew inThursday to do the weekend with us.
We hustled and crammed in every session we could during the conference
and had a wonderful mini vacation to boot. We sure apprecated both
opportunities and came back in great spirits. One of Tony's conditions
was that when we returned,  we had to give written and oral
presentations on at least one important topic to share with the rest of
the staff.

There were two kinds of education - sessions at the conference and one
of our operations people learned how to shop! One of the ladies had a
B.S in shopping, another a Masters and the biggest shopper of all had
her Ph.D. The  poor trainee learned from the best. Fortunately,  I'm a
window shopper so I didn't come home broke.

My point is that your company can reward you for a job well done while
sending you to an educational conference without breaking the budget
with the side benefit of boosting morale. Not to mention putting us all
together on that trip forced more interaction outside of work
facilitating a better working relationship once we returned.

Fran Denoncourt formerly PCNA

Fran Denoncourt
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
Pinal County Treasurer's Office
Florence, AZ 85232
(520) 866-6404

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