I am about to leave Portland without having seen much, but I’ve had an exceptionally productive workday. Several months ago, J (my peer from Scotland) and I submitted a talk proposal to the FOSSY conference in Portland. The proposal was not accepted, and I moved on with my life.
Then, about three weeks ago, I received a message from J: Could you come to Portland so that we could work on our project? The project meant our talk on the same topic, which was accepted to another conference, which I will be unable to attend. J will be presenting for both of us, but I wanted to participate in the PowerPoint preparation. In addition, our proposal for a community event at PG Conf EU was accepted, and we needed to create an event plan. I didn’t know he was coming, because I knew our talk had not been accepted. He told me that his other talk was, so he was coming. I regret not knowing about it earlier, as I had just recently made plans to visit my friend Lena in Ann Arbor, so I said “no.” But two weeks ago, Lena informed me about her home situation, and we agreed that it would be better for me not to visit now. I immediately thought that in that case, I could go to Portland. I made this trip very minimalistic because I couldn’t waste workdays, and I had things to do at home (and I wouldn’t have any free weekends until October).
If you want to see a crazy person who spends their own time and money to fly for one day to the other side of the country just to work with somebody on a project – that’s me! Fortunately, the conference hotel was very reasonably priced, and I also found that I had $300 credit with American Airlines from last summer when we had to cancel our flight to DC, which was more than half the price of that ticket.
On Friday, I departed from ORD at noon, arrived in Portland at 2:30 PM local time, and still had time to attend the last two sessions at the conference and listen to J’s talk. We agreed on our working sessions’ schedule, and spent most of Saturday working, with interruptions for meals and coffee, and then I left for the airport, where I am now sitting, waiting for my red-eye flight.
Time and money well spent!
Hettie's Reflections 