ERE Expo - Day 1

Finally escaped from the dreadful Mid-Atlantic 'spring' yesterday on my journey to the ERE Expo in sunny, but only slightly warmer, San Diego. This is the 3rd straight year I have made it out to this great conference, the best recruiting show around.

The flight out was relatively uneventful, oh, except for the fact that I was one swallow of my soda away from ending up in the hospital! About halfway through the flight out here, I was finishing up my soda, chewing some ice when I felt a small metal object in my mouth. Turned out to be a metal clip, the type used to fasten bags of ice! I took the clip in the cup back to the flight attendant. The one who served me the drink said "Sorry, but I wasn't the one who put the ice in the bin." Later, when he came through the aisle offering more water (which I refused), he said "You know, once I was eating fish and found a bone in my mouth, It's an imperfect world." The fact that someone made a mistake resulting in a metal object being in my drink wasn't what bothered me at this point. What did was the fact that rather than apologize and promise to be more careful in the future, he felt it more important to cover his backside. I thought Southwest was better than that, guess not :-(

Made to the hotel around 3PM and quickly found a number of friendly faces, including Gerry Crispin, Kevin Wheeler, Dennis Smith, and the ERE staff. The awards dinner was very nice, sat with Gerry, Jeff Hunter and the EA team, a couple recruiting leaders from Nationwide and others. It was good to hear from Gerry (an awards judge) about what set the winners apart from the rest.

This being my 3rd year attending this event, I am now running into people I know at every turn. After dinner, I quickly hooked up with Mendoza, Jason Davis and Heather Hamilton. The networking just keeps getting better and better. I have some nice pictures so far and hope to have them up by the weekend.

Today got off to an early start, and it's going to be a busy one. More on that tomorrow.