Quick notes:

• Speaker dinner at Spaghetti Warehouse. Good location, but just a little confined and a little noisy. Perfect location is hard to find!
• Signs were up and looked good, though I heard a few people still weren’t quite clear to park (it’s a big parking lot). One or two more signs and/or a greeter would help with that.
• Great email sent out on Friday “critical information”. I want to remember that for Orlando because we send a lot of email, but if they only read one – the one on Friday is the one.
• They had a volunteer with the QR tag for speaker evals taped to their shirt walking around – nice!
• All rooms on the first floor this year, much better, except…one room was offset from the others. Better signs will help with that and it’s worth having all the rooms one floor.
• Nice speaker shirts!
• After party was at World of Beer. Close, good location. Planned for outside seating but it was cold enough we moved inside. Much better than previous after party location.
• Hot lunch with two lines, seemed to run well.
• They had “to go” boxes made up for sponsors/attendees going to lunch time sessions. I like that idea a lot. In Orlando they have to carry their food back through the sponsor area and upstairs to a room – a cover plate would help with that. We might just put the boxes in the room, or bring up once we have a head count. Nice idea!
• End of day raffle went well. Most interesting moment was when a prize winner climbed the stairs to find the prize already claimed – turns out two people with a last name that sounded exactly alike and the first one up the stairs got the prize!
• I was struck by how few sponsors really use their 1 minute at the end of the day effectively (and this is not just in Tampa). Sponsors – this is worth practicing. You get most of the attendees listening and if you do it well, you can make it memorable.
• I had 15 or so in my automated restore presentation and got better than average participation.