New Orleans Wrap-Up

I brought my camera with me to the Big Easy. I had all these amazing intentions to take pictures of the city, the conference, the food…


I didn’t take a single picture with my camera. I did take one photo with my phone (my black suit looked great).

Despite my lack of photography, the trip was good! The numbers were low—in both attendance and exhibitors—but I still think it was an otherwise successful conference.

The highlights (and lowlights):

• Dinner at Mr. B’s Bistro. I had their pork chop—delicious.


• The Roosevelt hotel. Gorgeous! Very ornate decorations. Except that it really bugged me when they repeatedly “refreshed” the room and switched on every light and electronic machine possible. I appreciate the service but all I could think about was how much time, money, electricity, and resources that were wasted! My room is clean, now just walk away.


• The hotel had a gym! Running below sea level is fun.


• I collected a number of business cards and chatted about some promising book projects… and some not-so-promising book projects. “Japanese foreign policy in Mozambique”? “Deforestation and wildlife policy in Nigeria”? Um, yikes. Very narrow. Who’s going to read that?


• My coworkers. Had a great time gossiping with our marketing manager and it was nice to see an old colleague.


• The French Quarter. So cute and charming! Unfortunately, we didn’t make it out of these touristy areas so I don’t think I got to see the “real” New Orleans (whatever that may be).


• The attendees—full of life and character! We had African music outside our booth. One man wanted to buy a book so badly (at the sale price, of course) that he took our only copy and carried it around the book exhibit until the "fire sale". Heaven forbid that either 1) someone else bought the book, or 2) he had to pay full price.


• Lowlight: the conference was poorly organized. Two-thirds of us had to sharpie our names on the name tags. Not very professional for being a “professional” conference and all.


• Lowlight: unless we sat at the bar (where we often made good friends with the bartenders!) the service was painfully slow. I’m not sure if this is a “Big Easy” thing or what, but it’s a good thing that we weren’t ever in a rush.

Despite the downsides, it was all-in-all a good experience! It’s nice to be back in my own bed and I'm even more excited for the long weekend out of the office. (My e-mail inbox still scares me.)

More to the point, I hope that being at the meeting will help to circulate my name among our authors and even more important, potential authors. My goal is that people will realize that they can come directly to me with their questions and their book projects.

I have to admit that just getting out of town for a while was nice, but there is one thing I really took away from this conference: Don’t worry so much! Things inevitably go much better—in business and in life—when you just sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

Which badge looks more professional?