Got settled into the hotel yesterday and registered for the conference.  The Westin is a nice place – I could definately get used to the big HD LCD TV and the king size “heavenly bed” in my room.  The downside: wireless internet here is terrible which makes staying in touch with the office rather difficult.  My goal is to not return to an enormous pile of email!

The keynotes this morning were very enlightening – I had no idea how widespread web 2.0 initiatives are in the corporate community.  For instance, I learned that fedex has a facebook presence and a desktop app written with Adobe Air, and the CIA uses a host of tools coined intellipedia that includes everything from a wiki tool to presentation of online media.  Over lunch I sat next to a reporter for PC Magazine and she told me all about some of the cool things she’s uncovered while covering emerging web technologies.  Perhaps the most interesting was the fact that Comcast (the cable/digital phone company) actively monitors twitter and responds within minutes to any customer who tweets about their experience with Comcast.  To my amazement they even got back to me about my tweet about this and I messaged a couple times back and forth with their rep who knew a couple people in Grand Rapids.  Talk about the shrinking world.

After lunch I went to a couple break out sessions – the first was all about social bookmarking sites, how they’re used, how they can be improved and ways to integrate them into some of our own tools.  I left with a whole new vocabulary and a greater appreciation for tagging.  Next I attended a very collaborative panel discussion n blogging.  The panel ended up being the entire room, and sadly half the time was wasted going around a room of over 150 people and letting each person introduce themselves and their blog.  It got better from there - there were nuggets of useful information disbursed between all the self indulgent discussions.  I then realized that for the most part these people were bloggers and they were simply converting their blogs to “verbal” for the captive audience.

To keep it brief, those were the high and low lights of the day – I wrapped up with a little time spent socializing in the vendor demo pavilion.  I saw some cool tools, many of which seemed like little known sites with some very cool ideas.  I also chatted with a couple Microsoft gurus about their new initiative to compete on the itunes U space.  The zunes are nice and their product looked very sleak (and open source) but I think Apple has that market pretty well cornered at this point.

I’m thinking of walking around Boston again tonight but there is a heat index of 103 today and I just had a beer so I feel like taking a nap.  Maybe I’ll go watch some news, wait for the sun to set a bit and then venture out on the subway to see what I can find.  I invested in a one week pass to ride the subway and busses which has made getting around very easy.

Ciao!

Had a great time yesterday seeing the sites in Rhode Island – the nice thing about the traveling here: you can get from one side of the state to the other in no time.  After trying some “bananas foster” pancakes for breakfast (hadn’t heard of this before, basically pancakes with warm bananas on top) we headed to Newport via scenic route 1A through some cool little towns.  Once we got to Newport we went straight to the cliff walk to see the mansions and the scenic “cliff” views.  It was an extremely hot day but an occasional breeze made it bearable.  I was able to get a couple cool photos to share and learned a little about Newport on our ~3 mile hike.  We walked by a small private school (Salve Regina) with some beautiful buildings right on the ocean – GVSU has a great campus but nothing could beat some of these views.

After the cliff walk we took a drive to view some of the mansions and sites off the beaten path.  I saw the church where JFK and Jackie O. were married and then ended up at Bretton point, a park known for it’s high winds and thus a great place to fly a kite. Hopefully I’ll be able to bring Holly next time and would love to spend a whole day exploring Newport – the downtown area had some great shops and even houses an international tennis museum (if thats your thing…).

Once away from ocean breeze the heat became a little more intense so we headed to Cranston for an early dinner at Twin Oaks restaurant.  Twin Oaks apparently is a Rhode Island “institution” having opened originally in the 30′s as a speakeasy during prohibition; it is now described locally as a poor man’s country club.  A couple things struck me about this place – first, it is way off the beaten path in the middle of a couple neighborhoods so I was surprised to hear that it is almost always packed and hard to get into (it has 6 dining rooms that hold over 400 people), second was the fact that Twin Oaks only employs males and the uniform is a white button up shirt with a bow tie, and every order is taken by memory.  We had a table of 5 and our order was varied with substitutions and appetizers but the seasoned waiter got everything correct.  On the funnier side, I snapped this picture on their door – no muscle shirts allowed.  Oh, and I also had a quohog for the first time – kind of a stuffed baked clam and very good.

I ended the day with Sunday night mass, something Catholic churches in Michigan don’t seem to offer, where the priest talked about not spoiling kids during the homily.  He slept on a plank when he grew up and he appreciates things now – sounds good to me.  It was looking like rain when we left so we grabbed some coffee and then decided to take a chance walking a nature trail to get some more views of the bay.

Heading up to Boston later this morning via train to check into the conference and attend the opening session later this afternoon.  Heat index is going to be between 100 and 105 today so that is pretty cool.  I can honestly say the weather in Austin, Texas was cooler this same time last year.

I made it to Boston in one piece – the movie Semi Pro made the flight go by quickly. I’ve been to Boston several times but over the years I’ve come to east coast many times to visit family in Rhode Island. I’m always so impressed by how interconnected everything is – after I landed I hopped on a “Peter Pan” bus to Providence. I was on the bus within 20 minutes of my plane landing and in Providence a little over an hour later. I was in such a rush all day that I didn’t eat anything so having a couple beers instead of food when I arrived may have been a bad idea. We eventually headed to Narragansett Bay for dinner and ate at George’s, a nice fresh seafood joint. Slow service aside, the food was great – I had lobster bisque and stuffed flounder.

I got an early rise this morning at 6am and got through most of my outstanding email from yesterday – and a pot of coffee. Now I am watching local Providence news (I love the thick accent, especially when they were talking about the chowda’ cook off) and now it’s time for Sunday Morning news on CBS.

We’re heading out shortly to visit Newport, RI. I think we’re going to take the cliff walk to see the ocean/mansions out there but the heat is a little insane here so we may opt for a mansion tour or something similarly air conditioned. Hopefully I’ll remember my camera this time and will have some pictures to share.  For now, I’ll have to include PGornell’s pic from Flickr.

Fun fact: In the last 48 hours I’ve driven over 1,000 miles and slept way too little. My 2 hour nap this evening was wonderful.

This has been a busy week – I’m going to be in Boston next week attending the Enterprise 2.0 conference so I packed as many meetings in this week as possible to wrap up all that I could before leaving. I don’t think the schedule would be too hectic normally, but this week was not the best timing for the Spring Break conference down in Athens, OH at Ohio University. This is always a good conference for the money and well worth the trip.

Highlights from the trip:

• The random and amusing conversation that stems from being in a mini-van with 5 people for 14 hours. This year’s trip included conversations on politics, relationships, relationships on laws and media, and poor dental hygiene.
• Enjoying a drink in downtown Athens. As much as I love GVSU, I would have truly enjoyed spending time in an established college town like this. The campus is in a very picturesque area, surrounded by nature and buildings that date back to the 1800′s. My favorite stop is Tony’s – a small bar with old wooden booths and baskets of peanuts.
• Selecting sessions from a couple conference tracks: best sessions this year: CSS topics with Eric Meyer, Podcasting with the host of askthetechies.com, customer service with John Cummigs and an interesting accessibility look at rich internet applications with Andrea Hill.
• Getting the itch to twitter again – we’ll see how long I stay at this, but it was cool connecting with others at the conference via twitter. Hopefully I can do the same at next week’s conference.
• Worst part: leaving Athens at 5:30pm and getting home at 2:30am.

Today I wrapped up the whirlwind road war with a trip to MSU to present the MI-CUPA group with an online tool for their salary reporting. The group loved the tool and had some great suggestions to make it even better.

I have a full day of meetings tomorrow, mostly on the Allendale campus, and then Friday I will have some time to make final plans for flying into Boston. I am spending the weekend in Boston before the conference, originally hoping Holly could come for a couple days, but jury duty changed those plans. The new plan is to take the train to Providence and spend time with my family there. I’m looking forward to this part of the trip as I usually only get to see these aunts/uncles/cousins once every few years.

For now, I get to wind down and get caught back up with email from this afternoon.  At least I can kick my feet back and watch Ice Road Truckers while reading work email