I’m happy to announce that my wallet is smaller, but I have successfully registered for the 2019 Texas Master Naturalist Conference! It’s in mid-October in Rockwall, Texas. I hear it’s a nice setting away from Big City stuff. Or it’s in a resort area. We’ll see.
Why do I say I learned a lesson? Well, last year, when I was a newby at the Master Naturalist conference game, I waited a few days after registration opened to go fill out my forms. I quickly learned that most of the sessions I was excited about attending were full already. I wasn’t about to make that mistake again, so at 10 am on the day registration opened (today) I was in there filling out screen after screen of information just so I could get to the session choices.
As an aside, I am extra glad my job isn’t Conference Registration Form Maker. The small amount of experience I’ve had with the Cvent software when my team at work uses it makes me gasp. And a conference as complex as one of these is mind boggling. It has pre-sessions and post-sessions. And during the conference, you can take half day, all day, two-hour, or one-hour sessions, but once you register for a half-day session, you don’t want to pay any attention to the others in that time frame or you registration will be coughed back out for you to figure out the problem. I am sure it is quite a programming effort to set all this up.
And then there are the session descriptions! Kudos to the whole team that worked on that. Whew!
I’m concentrating my sessions on iNaturalist and riparian stuff. I am also taking a class on running effective meetings. Now, those of you who know me probably realize that I love running meetings more than I probably should. But, when you’re pretty good at something you know you can do better, and I may have to run more meetings next year, so what the heck. Let’s learn.
I wish the hotel wasn’t so expensive, but I just have to have my own room. I need my introvert time, and I’m going on the Friends of LLL trip to New Orleans the next week and will have to have a couple of roommates there. Must dole out some self care!
I hope all my Master Naturalist friends go this year. Last year was so much fun!
The Hermits' Rest 