Big(D) Design conference reflection

I attended the first Big D Design conference this Saturday. Overall I was impressed about the structure of the conference and how well it seemed to flow in spite of the lack of time between sessions. It did feel rushed and I was extremely tired at the end of the day after trying to take in 9, YES --> NINE <--, one hour sessions in one day. That is a lot of conference sessions to take in for one day and retain the disparate information.

Some things that I liked about the conference. Good quality of speakers for a low cost conference. This does show how much good talent that we have in Dallas. Good central location for most people. At least it was easy access off Hwy 75. The meeting facility was in good condition and had enough room for most of the events/sessions. No problem with the food. It was a great little box lunch with sandwich, chips and cookie.

Some things that I did not like as much: Parking was not great but was acceptable. This may be attributed to not knowing much about the SMU campus. The only issue about the facility is it didn't have enough power outlets to charge up the laptop. I was out of power by the 3rd session until I was in a room that had more outlets. One conference room had classroom stadium seating but not all outlets under the desks were working. The last thing is the initial wait to check into the conference. I think that it took about 30 minutes to get checked in. I would have loved to use that time to walk around the sponsors tables or even get a little breakfast or coffee. However, by the time that I got in to the conference area the first session was about to start and I wanted to get a seat and make sure that we had wireless access.

Overall I am glad that I attended and will probably attend next year. However, that may depend on the content and speakers.