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Between various LiveJournal issues and hectic work schedules, I haven't posted very much lately. To make matters worse, I spent all day Friday and Saturday attending a Rotary District Conference at Lake Lawn Resort in Delavan, Wisconsin.
First, the resort. Per their web page, there's been some sort of resort on the site since 1878. The current iteration has a nice golf course (which I didn't have a chance to play on - more below) and otherwise nice facilities. The resort was actually recently renovated - it changed ownership in 2010 and the new owners put a lot of money into a highly visible renovation. The food and service was also pretty good, and the conference center facilities were well-laid out.
Second, unfortunately, the conference was not well-ran. Partially this was due to several members of the committee quitting a couple of months before the conference. This forced several people to jump in and attempt a last-minute rescue.
My biggest beef with the conference was time management. Rotary conferences are mostly plenary sessions, in which everybody is together in one room. All of these sessions ran way over the allotted time. If you give a passionate person a microphone and say "talk about your passion" they will run over unless you aggressively manage the time. Call it Gerrib's "Law of the Microphone."
Smart conference runners will have two schedules - the published schedule and the real schedule. The real one will be shorter than the published one, thus allowing for overages. This didn't happen, and so we had marathon sessions that made a hash of the schedule. Thus endeth the lesson.
First, the resort. Per their web page, there's been some sort of resort on the site since 1878. The current iteration has a nice golf course (which I didn't have a chance to play on - more below) and otherwise nice facilities. The resort was actually recently renovated - it changed ownership in 2010 and the new owners put a lot of money into a highly visible renovation. The food and service was also pretty good, and the conference center facilities were well-laid out.
Second, unfortunately, the conference was not well-ran. Partially this was due to several members of the committee quitting a couple of months before the conference. This forced several people to jump in and attempt a last-minute rescue.
My biggest beef with the conference was time management. Rotary conferences are mostly plenary sessions, in which everybody is together in one room. All of these sessions ran way over the allotted time. If you give a passionate person a microphone and say "talk about your passion" they will run over unless you aggressively manage the time. Call it Gerrib's "Law of the Microphone."
Smart conference runners will have two schedules - the published schedule and the real schedule. The real one will be shorter than the published one, thus allowing for overages. This didn't happen, and so we had marathon sessions that made a hash of the schedule. Thus endeth the lesson.
