I’m writing this Wednesday morning, and it’s hard to describe the feeling of speed that comes with being here this week. After the keynote yesterday I had a short break, then it time to host the MVP Birds of a Feather table. I had about 10 people join me for lunch to talk about statistics, networking, and more, and at one point my friend Rob Farley (who was hosting a table as well) stepped over to join us for a few minutes and had a lot of fun explaining collations as being similar to the differences in English across different countries, with his example being “pants”. Apparently outside the US pants <> jeans/outerwear. Wish I had it on video!

As soon as that was done I went to find the room for my stats presentation. It turned out to be in the North tower, way off the beaten path, and I was think that it didn’t bode well for attendance. A few people already there when I arrived, chatted some and got set up, and noticed it was a good sized room. I was astounded to see that by the time I started the room was almost full. Joe Webb had the count at around 200, which is an extraordinary crowd, I’m used to more in the 50-75 range. I’m attributing it to being clearly labeled as ‘introduction’ as well as the Summit being the largest ever, just more people to divide across the tracks. The talk went reasonably well, had a few questions that I didn’t know, and tons of questions at the end.

At that point my schedule went a bit off track. I spent some time talking with Joe Webb, and then we both attended the kick off meeting of the Election Review Committee. I’ll blog more on that separately. It was planned to have the meeting, but the time changed and threw off some other things I had planned. Happens, just hard to juggle those changes and stay focused on ‘where do I next’ and the associated preparation.

After that I hit the Expo early to talk to some of our sponsors, all thrilled with attendance, all happy with the support were giving them. Certainly didn’t talk to all of them, a lot of sponsors here this year!

I couldn’t count the number of people I met and re-met, and the conversations through out the day. It’s fun, tiring, exciting, useful, tiring. Trying to make notes to follow up on, keep track of time so as not to miss something, and to stay focused while other people walk by and say hello.

After that it was off to a couple of parties, and didn’t go to all that were available, finally running out of energy and just stopping for food and enjoying dinner, still seeing people come by and stopping to talk. A good day, close to great, just the way the Summit is supposed to be!