I love my job.

I travel for work about once a month, which is not enough for me to hate it (yet). Usually it's me headed out to one of our agencies alone, but once a year our company puts on a big ol' fancy meeting for the users of our software--the User Group Meeting. So every year, 20 of us break corporate policy and board the same plane (we're supposed to travel in groups of three or less so our company doesn't suddenly find itself missing 20 of its 35 employees when a bird flies into one or both of our engines), and head out for three days of schmoozing, presenting, training, entertaining, and working harder than we work all year. This year our meeting was in New Orleans at the Ritz-Carlton. Yes please.

We arrived via Lincoln Navigator limo, which I like to call the Linmo:
My company needed to hire a photographer for the event, so I recommended a good friend of mine who happens to be a pro photographer: Mason! Here he is shooting fab photos from our 10th story room at the Ritz:

One of the aforementioned fab photos overlooking the Crescent City:

This year, we incorporated a service project into our meeting, because we found ourselves in a city that is still in need of some rebuilding. So, we and about 60 of our clients volunteered at the International School of Louisiana for a day, mulching playgrounds, landscaping, building benches, painting, and doing whatever the heck they asked us to. I personally built 6 benches! Out of 2 x 4s and screws! I used a power tool! I actually constructed something! And to prove it, I had our photographer document one of the said benches:

A friend of mine lives in NOLA right near this school, and he said that when the kids were back in class the following Monday, my benches were VERY popular, nay, THE VERY BEST THING ABOUT SCHOOL! OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but he did say he saw a kid sitting on one.

We worked hard and had a chance to meet some of the kids and their parents.

The whole crew after a job well done:

The service project was an awesome way to start the meeting out and to help us forget the intense and ridiculous amount of work we all had to do in the following days.

I presented four breakout sessions and was the emcee for the whole shebang. Emcee duty translates into memorizing scripts full of witty banter, walking way too much in heels, being under direct, constant fluorescent lighting, speaking to a crowd of 200, and being plugged into an earpiece for two days straight. I swear I heard that voice in my sleep, "Carly, you don't need to announce both of the Business Analysts like it says in the script. Bethany will come up halfway through Eric's presentation, so just introduce Eric alone, halfway down page 39." But I did enjoy speaking the lingo. I said phrases like "10, 4" and "Roger" through the earpiece as much as I possibly could.

After months of planning, we made it to the end, and in the words of Borat, it was a GREAT SUCCESS. Here's the team chillin' in the courtyard after a job well done. I love my team. I love my job. I'm pretty lucky. Next year's meeting is at the Bellagio, which should be a grand old time, but it personally makes me sick to think that our next User Group Meeting is a short 11 months away...