I can’t believe it is coming up on a full year already. Where does the time go? Seriously. I went back and skimmed the previous “Months on the Job” posts and it was neat to see, at a glance, what was going at different points in time. Each post sparked a fond memory sort of like flipping through a photo album containing snapshots from my last ten vacations.
I like my job and the people I work with a lot but I wouldn’t consider the last 11 months a vacation by any stretch. While there has been a great deal of work and responsibility, there is one aspect of my new role many might consider “vacation-like”: Business trips and work-related travel.
I have mentioned many of the various conferences and events I have attended since changing jobs in separate posts but there isn’t a single post that captures the quantity and variety of places I have been able to visit for work.
Here they are in order:
- Las Vegas, NV (MIX06)
- Orlando, FL (DevConnections + Orlando .NET User Group)
- San Bernardino, CA (Inland Empire .NET User Group)
- Nice, France (DevConnections)
- Boston, MA (Tech-Ed)
- Auckland, New Zealand (Tech-Ed)
- Sydney, Australia (Tech-Ed)
- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Tech-Ed)
- Las Vegas, NV (Adobe MAX)
- Barcelona, Spain (Tech-Ed)
In terms of time zones, the farthest destination flying west is Auckland (+13 GMT) which is 21 hours ahead of Seattle (-8 GMT). The farthest flying east would be Paris & Barcelona which are both +1 GMT, or 9 hours ahead of Seattle.
A better measure of the distance traveled is the actual number of flight miles at just over 67,000! Yes, I got to know SFO and ORD very well this year. Both of them did me wrong during trip 9 and trip 10, however.
Lessons learned:
- Carry-on or leave behind;
- Avoid ORD like the plague…there is no such thing as good flying weather in Chicago;
- Fly direct to Vegas from Seattle (i.e., Alaska Airlines not United);
- Don’t schedule your first presentation on the same day you arrive in Auckland from Seattle.
So, while spending the better part of this past year learning all I could about the world of marketing & product management at Microsoft, I was also able to visit a big slice of our world and learn a wee bit more about its people.
Both worlds have been fascinating: All I had hoped in so many ways; more than I expected in so many more.