Well, I’m at the airport with plenty of time before my flight. Because it’ delayed by almost two hours; the plane hasn’t arrived yet. I can’t find a power outlet; there’s free WiFi here (better than I can say for my hotel) but my laptop won’t last three hours.

I hope everyone else from the Roundtable either had or has a safe trip home! A big Thank You from me goes out to Clif Guy and his team for the amazing job they did with the Roundtable, and the vendors were also generous with the excellent meals they supplied. I was also given rides throughout the week (to and from the airport, to and from my hotel, and to the restaurants) by Matt Bradshaw of COR, Dean Lisenby of ACS Technologies, Nick Nicholaou of MBS Inc. and Ministry Technology Institute, and David Crist of First Presbyterian Church of Bellevue, so a big thank you to all of them as well! I appreciate the rides but also the conversation.

There was myriad technical information to absorb at the Roundtable, which was worth about ten times the actual cost in value, but the biggest reason to go was to network and build relationships with others in similar situations. I was able to meet people that I had only known though blogs, and there were also many people who don’t blog that were great to hang out with. This applies to the peers and vendors both. When a vendor sends their IT person and not a salesman, they can make excellent contributions on the level we in the Church IT world are looking for without annoying us with sales pitches. Save those for our supervisors. And that’s what I experienced from everyone I talked to this time.

All this applies to the Granger Roundtable last week put on by Jason Powell, which I have not had time to blog about but was equally as informative and relational. (Hmmm…saying “relational” makes me think of databases. If you know me, you’re probably not surprised :-)

Well, that laptop battery I mentioned is almost dead, so I’ll cut this here. I suppose that’s good; they say less is more. Unless it’s a Church IT Roundtable, in which case, more is more :-)

UPDATE (at 9:22 am Central): I found power! Sometimes, going to the restroom is useful. Well, it usually is, but sometimes what you find along the way is useful as well…but my flight is delayed another half an hour now, so 11:28 is the target time. Not that I believe them this time after it moved from 10:45 to 10:55 to 11:03…