Orlando - Deltek Insight 2009

On Saturday, May 9th, Kirk & I headed to SLC to catch our flight to Orlando, Florida. Neither one of us had ever been there, so we were excited. The accounting program I use at work is called Deltek Vision and this was their annual users conference - Deltek Insight. So... it was a "business" trip, but we extended on the front end of the trip for some pleasure. Flying is not my favorite thing to do, but better than driving across the country. Saturday was a long travel day and we were both pretty tired when we arrived at our hotel. We stayed at the Orlando World Marriott Center, which was where the conference was being held. And... just our luck.... they were having record-breaking heat for the month of May. We were on the 19th floor and had great views from our balcony.

The hotel was very nice, except for one "not so small" detail..... everything in the resort was PEPSI! So, first thing Sunday morning we took a cab to the closest shopping center. It was pretty fun - we bought a couple t-shirts, sunglasses, and of course - DIET COKE. We didn't do much else on Sunday - just relaxed and wandered the resort to get familiar with the layout - it was was pretty big!

We only had a couple of days to bum before I had to start my classes, so we decided to spend them at Disney World. We didn't rent a car, but chose to take shuttles to the park. We were only a couple of miles away, but it was all busy freeway and not safe to walk. On Monday, we went to EPCOT. This venue is all about technology & innovation; plus the culture & cuisine of 11 nations were represented. Some of our favorites were "Mission Space" - a motion simulator that was pretty realistic for a trip to the moon. We loved "Soarin" - the simulation of hang gliding over the golden State of California. That was pretty awesome, but not long enough. We thought it was pretty strange that they didn't fly over Florida instead of California. We also watched a 3-D movie "Honey I Shrunk the Audience". There was a warning that it might be scary for children with animal phobias. Children heck.... the feeling of hundreds of rats crawling under your legs pretty much freaked me out!!!! All in all - Epcot was pretty interesting, but it was SO HOT!!

Tuesday we chose the Animal Kingdom Theme Park. There are supposedly 1700 animals, 250 species on 500 acres of ground. We sure didn't see that many - it was too hot and they were all hiding out in their caves or any cool dark place they could find. We did see some and it was very pretty there - lots of trees and jungle. We went on the Expedition Everest (roller coaster) ride and it was pretty scary, especially our close encounter with the infamous YETI.

The center attraction of the park is the sculpted "Tree of Life". It is 50 feet wide, 14 stories tall, and has 325 animals carved in its trunk. Another fun fact - there are 103,000 translucent leaves that were individually placed and actually blow in the wind. It was pretty amazing! We also enjoyed the "Tough to be a Bug" 3-D movie. Overall - we were both a little disappointed with Disney World. We felt like it was all way too commercialized and very expensive. I guess it has been a long time since we had been to Disneyland or anything else like this. It is probably way more fun with kids along - maybe we'll try Disneyland sometime with the grandkids. However, we were just really happy to spend some time together away from any schedules or distractions.

On Tuesday night, we met up with Jewell & Associates - they are the consultants we use for training and support on our software. They took a couple of buses of their clients to treat us to a dinner out at the Universal CityWalk. This is supposed to be Orlando's hottest spot for entertainment. It was pretty fun to see, but we didn't have a lot of time to look around. We went to a Karaoke Restaurant and they had a buffet of Mexican food set out for us. It was delicious and a lot of fun.

And despite the fact that the guys at work like to tease me that I didn't do what I was supposed to while in Florida, I did! This event is the largest annual gathering of project-focused professionals. There were about 4,000 attending this year. They announced the release of their new Version 6.0 and I am really excited about many of the new features that will be available. This is an amazing software for engineering professionals - especially if it is used to its full potential. The keynote speaker in the opening session was an astronaut - Jerry Linenger - who went on one of the most dangerous and dramatic missions in space history. He spent nearly five months aboard the Russian space station Mir. He survived an out-of-control spacecraft tumbling through the darkness, the worst fire ever to occur in space, and repeated failures of critical life support systems. He logged 50 million miles on that mission. His story was incredible. Some my favorite pointers he gave for us to be successful in business and life in general were:

* Don't just put in your time - make every day count.

* Seek out people you trust, come up with a plan & execute.

* When you go to bed - leave it all behind - learn from it and push ahead.

* Have a passion for what you are doing & you WILL find a way.

* Always act with integrity & moral courage. Do the RIGHT thing.

These were two of the friends I met at Insight - Sarah from New Jersey (L) and Susan (R) from Illinois. We hit it off right away and hung out for every meal. Sarah went with us to CityWalk; then we all went together for the Celebrate Insight event at Sea World on Thursday night. Deltek had 30 buses lined up to take everyone there. They took over Sea World for the night - an exclusive Deltek party! It was pouring rain when we left and I was worried how it would turn out, but the Sea World personnel were ready for us - handing out blue parkas to everyone as we went through the gate. We all looked like a bunch of smurfs running around. It was SO fun.... they had all the restaurants open with buffets for us and you could just take your pick. There were several rides open for us and just before we left we had an exclusive showing of SHAMU ROCKS - killer whales performing routines that were absolutely incredible. They also announced that Deltek Insight '10 would be in Washington DC. If the economy doesn't completely crash, it will be Kevin's turn to go.

We spent Friday afternoon after I got out of classes at Downtown Disney. I went shopping and Kirk went to a movie. It worked out great! We got all packed up on Friday night and headed to the airport bright & early Saturday morning. We were so glad to be home and had MOUNDS of laundry and tons of mail to go through, but it was so worth it.

It was an incredible trip -

thank you JONES & DEMILLE ENGINEERING!