Well, I've been in Central Florida for half a week already visiting family, but I'm only now finally checked in to the conference hotel in Orlando. So, I suppose today is the beginning of the conference portion of my trip.
Before I mention my pre-conference impressions, I should mention that my only conference to compare this one to is DevLearn... which is held at the Aria... in Las Vegas. So, any comparison is likely to come out in favour of the location that was practically built for conventions.
So, the hotel. It's nice enough, but after DevLearn is feels so very small. Now, this can be a good thing. It means that tomorrow when I drag my sorry carcass out of bed to attempt to be coherent at the 7:15am Morning Buzz session, at least it won't take me more than a few moments to get from my room to the session. In Vegas you had to plan an absurd amount of time to even get from one part of the hotel to the other.
The smallness also means that the likelihood of bumping into a fellow Learning Solutions attendee is quite high. I rather like that. Unfortunately, no one is wearing their con badges right now, and I completely suck at identifying people from their tiny Twitter photos, but I suppose this will go better when we're all tagged and name badged tomorrow.
My room here is fine, but sadly doesn't have the frankly spectacular bathtub that the Aria rooms have. I'm not even a big bath person myself and I still fell half in love with that thing. On the plus side, at least the hotel rooms here don't automatically play terrible music the moment you walk in. That's a real plus.
As for attractions, yeah, there's no Vegas strip, but there IS, you know, Disney and all. Plus I think as conference attendees that we can get discounted "After 4pm" tickets for the parks. I am absolutely heading off for a discounted trip to Epcot on Thursday as a reward for surviving my concurrent session.
Overall, this seems like a cosier conference overall. If you're looking for a big event, this might not be your cup of tea. But if you're looking for something a smidge more intimate, I'm getting the feeling that Learning Solutions might be the right fit.
No comments:
Post a Comment