There has always been something special about that place for me — when I met Maxine and John at SXSW in 2005, I found two people with whom I immediately connected and provided me speaking opportunities on the world stage. Now, they have become great friends, and even business partners — Dave Shea and I brought Web Directions North to Canada with John’s and Maxine’s support and guidance.

My schedule is pretty open while in Sydney — a full-day workshop on Tuesday, and then a session in the main conference on Thursday. This is good — I get my speaking out of the way early and have time to enjoy the rest of the conference rather than my usual routine of scrambling to add slides to my presentation after seeing all the other sessions on the first day. Yes, I obsess over my presentations and sweat right up until the last minute.

I’ll also be at WebJam — this sounds über-cool — 18 presenters with 3 minutes each to show off their hottest web work.

Add to all of this the chance to reconnect with old friends and to meet new ones, and I can’t help but think this trip will be anything but special. Please come up and say “hi!” I’d love to chat with you about your work or play. If you want to talk WaSP, rugby, triathlon or anything else, count me in — it is all about the conversations!

What does all this have to do with An Event Apart you might ask? Well, my plan was to head to San Francisco and train at least three or four times while I was there — a couple of runs, a swim or two, and I wouldn’t fall far off my schedule, save for the day traveling home. Easy, right? Not so much.

I met up with Eric Meyer at SFO, headed to the hotel, checked in then went with Eric to eat. Once we were done that, we explored a small portion of San Francisco then headed back to the hotel. A short hour later, and we were on our way to the speaker dinner. Follow that with:

• two days of the best food I’ve ever eaten at a conference
• social drinks and good conversation with Daniel Burka, Ben Bykowski of optiem, Andrew and Arquay of CBS interactive, Greg Storey, Luke Dorny and many more at the media temple opening party
• more drinks at the AEA post festivities at the House of Shields with Hillary, Wes, Jeremy and Lauren of objectadjective
• more food and drink at 21st amendment with Ruth, Dan, Ryan, Ethan (wish you guys could have stayed longer) and…

Well… you get the picture.

Combine the food, drink and time spent in sessions when I thought I might have a chance to workout can be best summarized thusly:

Total workouts while in San Francisco = 0
Total pounds gained while in San Francisco = 6

Yes, 6.

And all the richer? Well, that has everything to do with the richness of the conference experience itself. I speak at quite a few conferences and I’m not often able to make the time to see all of the other speakers/sessions. This time, I did. I couldn’t help it — I wanted to be there for all of the sessions. All of the speakers were engaging, the audience was intelligent, eager and switched on and the overall organization of the conference was impeccable.