Wow. What a weekend. We are done with the 2008 UTOS Conference and it sure has been a busy week! Luckily I have an awesome family that helped with my kids and when I say ‘help’ I mean watched them nearly 24/7…well, actually 24/4. I slept in the same room but was gone before they woke up. So, thank you!
On Wednesday I did a little running around before heading up to Salt Lake Community College – Redwood campus. We were so lucky to have a lot of volunteers who helped with banners, registration, and room management. Some helped set up on Wednesday. Our Sponsors also came to set up booths. Wednesday evening we went to Fiddlers’ Elbows for a speaker’s dinner. It was 21 and over so we had to show our ID’s. The food was fantastic! I had 2 servings of ribs but my favorite part was the bread triangles and spinach and artichoke dip. Will kept stealing it from me 🙁 We had a ton of fun. I left Steve with my Benji (Ben Payne) so I could down to my sister’s before the kids fell asleep. Evie was wide awake when I got there but Spencer was passed out.
Thursday was our first day of the Conference. I woke up at 530 (AH!) and met Steve to carpool up. We got there before the inside doors were open so we hung out a bit. Once inside we set up registration and our swag boxes (Novell laptop bags with more swag inside). Around 10 we started getting a slow flow of attendees that needed to sign in to get their swag and badges. Luckily I had awesome volunteers that helped with the madness of registration. Throughout the day we had registrations plus during each class time I took pictures of the speakers and attendees. Thursday evening was the Keynote dinner and I attended for a short amount of time to let another core team member leave the registration desk.
Friday was an early morning again. More registrations, more pictures, and more fun. That evening a group of us (near 50 people if not more) went to Tucanos. YUMMY!
Saturday was the last day and, to tell you the truth, I was glad for that. It ws such a long weekend with so much work that I was excited to be done. I was able to sit in 2 classes – Inkscape and Gimp (both open source graphics programs) and learned a few things I didn’t know as well as had some questions answered. We also had Family Day on Saturday so we had Smokehouse BBQ for lunch and bouncy houses for any kids who came with their parents. I ended up leaving around 5 when the BoFs and Games started.
Here are a few pictures. The rest are on flickr