Every year I make a trip out to Portland for the annual consultants' meeting. Theoretically, we're supposed to spend the time learning all about the new products, but truthfully we spend most of our time eating, drinking, and socializing. This year, the biggest "new" thing was a significant age reduction in the marketing department. The girl on the left, Lisa, gave a very inspired talk on how marketing has changed from paper fliers to digital tweets. Since the average age of the consultants is about 68 (many of whom still use a flip phone), there were a lot of nervous people in the audience.
Another difference was that the new marketing emphasis will be on robotics and coding. They've always done robotics, but it's been more of a back-burner thing. So this year I'll be working a new conference in Philadelphia that specializes in robotics. I can do robotics in my sleep; it's the tweeting part that I haven't done before.
On the afternoon of the last day, everyone was scheduled to go to the Science Center. I've been to the Science Center a few times before, so my boss's wife and I snuck out to the Columbia Employee Store for a little shopping. This place was like Disneyland for clothes. Everything was half the price you'd pay at the outlet mall. I should have probably brought a bigger suitcase. I could have easily filled it with bargains, but I still managed to cram the ones I did buy into my carry-on bag.
