Tuesday 11 December 2007

Conference widows

Filed under "I'm really all pink and squishy inside."

I've just come off 3 weeks of conferences, having visited OOW in San Fran, the Perth Australia leg of the AUSOUG conference, as well as the Melbourne leg too. Conferences, whether you're just attending or actually participating, can take up a fair amount of work and home time in preparation, during the conferences and the lead up time. Multiple that by 3 and you'll know that I've recently had a very busy time.

In all the excitement of attending such events, it can be easy to forget the "significant other parties" who make a pretty clear sacrifice to allow us to attend these events.

My partner said to me the other day that she felt like a "conference window" over the last few weeks, having looked after our baby daughter, kept the house running with the usual array of chores, and working part-time to boot. All of this without me around to lend much of a hand at all while I swanned around the world. As you can imagine, an ever-so-small-incy-wincy-tiny-bit of guilt invaded my conscious.

So here's a small public thanks to my partner, and all the other wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, family, children, friends and work colleagues, who kindly and patiently put up with all of us who follow the conference trail, who understand and support us while we pursue our passions and interests, who nod and humour us when we return and rant about the latest Oracle 11g feature, the future of Fusion Middleware, or how many free Toad shirts we scored this year.

Thank you very much.

At least until next year of course.

2 comments:

Marc Thompson said...

You do, of course, get to share with them the bounty gained from the aforementioned conferences - the USB keys, croaking toads, pedometers, and the plethora of weird and wonderful pens. And who can begrudge the sudden influx of t-shirts that can be used through the remaining year for around-the-house jobs such as painting and gardening.
To think, we used to pay good money for items such as these... Oh, wait..

Anonymous said...

Sorry Chris - no sympathy at all, I'm on my 5th week of conferences currently in Portugal...oh and 2 already lined up for January as well... ;o)