Pre-Arisia Report: Atlanta

[woodwardiocom]

-One thing that made my Arisia more complicated than usual, is that I had a business trip Right Before. Wednesday, I left work at 1pm, stopped by Village Barber in Stoneham for a quick (and much-needed) haircut, then drove to Logan. The big temporary signs up said, "LONG-TERM PARKING USE CENTRAL GARAGE," so I drove to the Central Garage . . . which had signs up saying "LOT IS FULL". A gentleman at the entrance asked me, "How long?" "Long-term," I said. He directed me to lot E-2. Parking was fine there, and the shuttle got me to terminal B, no problem, but lot E-2 will return to our tale later.

-All goes well straight through to the Sheraton hotel and the next morning. My job is to train people in how to support our product. Not employees of our company, but rather people we're hiring for this task. (Of course, I should put "we" in quotes, since I'm getting laid off at the end of the month.) So, anyway, I went into this with minimal preparation. Partly because the guy in charge of getting me down there didn't give me much to work with, partly because I had little emotional investment, and partly because I'm a software engineer, not a trainer.

-Which means I was bit surprised to find it went really, really well. It was a smart group, and they picked the stuff up fast. When I had them drive the keyboard and mouse, they clearly had gotten the gist of what I was teaching. They asked good questions. I got lots of compliments. Apparently, I'm very good at training people. We'll return to this thought later, too.

-So, they thank me, and load me up with corporate-branded shwag, and drive me to the airport Friday morning, and I wing my way back to Boston. I land around 4:45 . . . and I have a 7:00 panel at Arisia. Will I make it in time?

Comments

[drwex]

If you're seriously interested in getting into the technical training biz I can forward you some of the pings I get. People see I've done teaching and figure I want to continue at it. Come to that, you should look into doing adjunct (read, night time) faculty at one of the local U's. UML might still be looking for someone to teach "Intro to the C Language" - I could ask if you wanted.

[motive-nuance.livejournal.com]

Heh. My plane landed at 5:30 -- I got to my 7:00 panel with five whole minutes to spare.

[katkt.livejournal.com]

But I bet you hadn't parked in lot E-2. I sense parking badness in this story.

[motive-nuance.livejournal.com]

Taking my carlessness into account, that would be a pretty safe bet!