Eric Stewart: Running Off At The Mouth

With an intense three days of presentations as well as good food and (at least one of the nights) bowling and games under my belt, it’s time to write a short post about what Network Field Day 29 was like as a first time delegate.

The whole traveling thing was not unlike going to Cisco Live.  Indeed, the layovers were in the usual places – either Phoenix or Houston.  Similarly, I had my calendar figured out ahead of time.  The difference being the number of days and the tightness of the schedule – we rarely had more than 45 minutes between presentations, and it’s not like I chose the presentations or could skip any of them.  It’s part of the deal to attend all of them and pay attention.  If you’re ever given the opportunity to be a delegate, you need to understand going in that you will have almost none of your waking time to yourself – you’re going to be involved in a Tech Field Day activity from probably 7:45am through to as late as 9pm.  That said, you will be treated to some amazing food and wonderful camaraderie from the other delegates.

The event staff are very gracious and were ready to answer questions and respond to reasonable requests … even one from me that I thought was going a bit too far (but I was hoping they could pick something up for me).  Alas, they couldn’t fulfill my request, but no worries – I found what I needed on the way to the flight home anyway.  I can’t thank Tom, Melanie, Matt, and Andrew enough for the invite and the care they provided to the delegates.  It’s always a little weird to me to have someone catering to me – I don’t like to be a burden.  But they were more than happy to both participate in the activities with us, while also providing us what we needed to be comfortable so that we could be attentive delegates.

Being invited to an event like this by people you respect (and maybe are still a little intimidated by) goes a long way to assuaging the ever-present imposter syndrome one might suffer from.  That is, until the first presentation involves them handing chips around for our review.  I work on network equipment … I don’t build the darn things.  Later, Tom explained what their goal was and while the “ask” would have been a bit much for me, perhaps another delegate would be able to whisper the right thing into the right ears for that particular company to get what they were hoping to get out of their presentation to us.

None of the presentations were … horrendous … at least, not in my opinion.  They might have been mistargeted or failed to keep me … “interactively involved”, but I was happy to be there and was able to mostly pay attention to all of them.  At least two of the presentations have led me to consider looking into our own infrastructure and the possibility of utilizing some of the equipment or services that were presented, one of which has always kind of been on the “todo/wish list” and another that got added to the list as a strong possibility for something to investigate for future purchase and implementation.

The only real downside of the trip was one of my own making: taking the red-eye back from SJC.  I took off around 11pm Pacific and didn’t really make it home until 3pm Saturday (part of that being due to a temporary diversion to Orlando due to weather over Tampa).  I might just have to bite the bullet next time and just stay until Saturday morning. Usually that means not getting home until 9pm that day, but the alternative for me is just not being able to get any sleep on the plane (in spite of upgrading the longer flight to first class) or in the airport during a five hour layover, meaning I was pretty much up from 9am Friday (6am local time to be ready for presentations starting at 8am) through 9pm Saturday Tampa time.  Also, if the schedule is similar in the future, I may just have to extend my vacation days to include the following Monday (and possibly Tuesday) to recover from such an intense trip.

Work is very generous with their leave, so I have plenty of vacation time stored up so that attending two or three of these a year isn’t out of the question, and I’ve already expressed an interest in attending the next one, reportedly in January.