It's Annual Conference Time

When you work for an Association, the annual conference is an integral part of the year's activities. Our annual conference is held the week after Thanksgiving, and consumes staff for most of the Fall and certainly the few weeks that follow Halloween. We're in San Francisco this year, poised to set attendance records and with the usual thousand things going on at any given moment. Add 3 1/2 days of leadership meetings prior to the conference proper, and you've got the recipe for an exhilarating and exhausting week.

The benefits of being in San Francisco include the proximity of Union Square, the numerous wonderful restaurants that beckon, and general fact that the city by the bay is one of the coolest around. With the holiday decorations at full throttle, it's may be the best time of the year to be here.

Tonight, we dined at Kuleto's Italian Restaurant. The food was wonderful, the atmosphere was perfect, and a fine time was had by all. Many of the restaurants around Union Square fall into the "tourist trap" category, but Kuleto's has been around for a while, and judging by the fact that folks were still streaming in as we were leaving around 9:30, it remains a perennial favorite.

Outside my hotel window, I see a sliver of the Bay Bridge, the Museum of Modern Art, and can hear the city that remains vibrant and alive at this hour, on a Tuesday evening. In just a few short hours, the next long day will begin.