Heading out West

Today is basically the day. I'm packing, checking, double-checking. i'm leaving my house in about half an hour to go to Dana's house for Saturday. Very early Sunday morning, or perhaps late on Saturday night, we're heading down to Balitmore to catch our plane which is set to depart at 8:30am. It's almost a straight shot down 95 all the way from her house to the airport. Google Maps puts the length of the trip at 2 and a half hours, and if we travel late enough in the night that might actually be an overestimate.

We take a plane to Minneapolis, where we have a layover for less then an hour. That's just long enough to hit the bathroom, grab some lousy airport food, and then run to our departure terminal. If you live in Minneapolis and want to get together, you're out of luck: There just won't be enough time.

From there we hit Portland, and should get in to town relatively early in the afternoon. I have to sign-in to the conference, maybe talk to a few people, and then we're probably going out to dinner with a fellow Wikimedian.

My presentation is Tuesday at 2:45 PST, and is scheduled to last about 75 minutes. I planned to speak for 60 minutes and then answer questions for the last 15, but I'm decently confident that there will be some time to spare. When we get back, hopefully I'll have some video to post up, and I'll also upload my presentation to meta.

The return trip departs wednesday morning, and takes us back to Baltimore with a layover in Houston. Again, no time to dilly-dally here either.

I think this is going to be a good trip. I get to stand up on stage and talk about things that I really love. Plus, hopefully there will be plenty of good networking opportunities for me. Networking is something that I don't feel I've ever been particularly proficient at, so at the very least this will be good practice for me on that front.

I should have internet access while I'm there, and should be able to check my emails and possibly make a blog post or two. If not, I'm sure I'll have plenty of stories to tell when I get back home.