As I sip my coffee, clear the fuzz from my brain, and reflect on the day of travel yesterday, flying from Norfolk, Virginia to New Orleans, I find myself wanting to slap my forehead. Or someone. While this is my first large technical convention it is not my first time traveling to a new area with a lot of people. The flights were find, it was at the airport that I actually wondered if anyone told New Orleans that 2,000+ nerds were descending into the city. I say that because, while still at the airport, there wasn’t a clue which of the 14 baggage pusher was ours, and the recommended, pre-booked airport shuttle was in total disarray. Ok, so finding one’s luggage is always a challenge at the airport. But we are nerds, and everyone was trying to connect to the airport’s website to find out where we should be. I’m pretty sure New Orleans has other large events during the year--- seem to remember seeing pictures, um, reading stories about it. All was good in the end. We (my coworkers and I) eventually ignored the signs and just started asking people that looked like they worked there. And despite the flight delays and airport mishmashup, we even managed register ahead of time… by going straight to the convention center before our hotel. I can imagine those lines this morning.
The second reason why I think the city wasn’t ready for the nerd invasion was our hotel. The Hilton Riverside is a beautiful city and they had plenty of staff on hand to greet us. It was at check in that I was told they only had smoking rooms with king size beds. What? This was booked months ago. I never said I wanted a king room, but did say no smoking. How did the wires get crossed? It wasn’t a big deal to be switched to a queen, non-smoking room. It just felt like that wasn’t their first choice.
My point is all of this seemed like a big mess up in planning. All of these organizations had my information and presumably that of my peers. They knew we were coming. Why did they seem so surprised when the data turned out to be true? This is, after all, a information technology conference. I’m sure I’ll geek out on all the new toys and techniques that I’ll see throughout the week. But it highlights the more fundamental issues; if you have all the information available any way you want it, are you going to do anything meaningful with it?