It was a lovely conference, even from afar (thanks, Maddie Grant and team, for a great online stream!).
A major storm slammed the Midwest, including my wife’s flight home – which was supposed to arrive around dinner, giving us a few hours together before my red-eye to Toronto and then Minneapolis. Then Alex’s flight home was delayed…and delayed… annnnnnd… cancelled. She got herself on another flight.
Meanwhile, I learned at 8:30 pm that my flight the next morning from Toronto to Minneapolis was also scrubbed. Unable to get through to Air Canada by phone (“Owing to greater than normal call volumes,” normally the bullshit line to end all bullshit lines, was probably true that night), I headed to the airport on spec. Thankfully, the Air Canada ticket agent cheerfully found me another flight – later in the afternoon, but it meant that I finally made it to the Nonprofit Technology Conference, bleary-eyed (I had plenty of company on that score) but intact.
Ticket agents, by the way, put up with a lot of crap for circumstances completely beyond their control. Be nice to them.
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I laughed out loud at this cartoon! There was a group of us returning home from NTC from SF who had a 3-hour delay on our shared flight. At least it was on the way back & we were in good company!
And good reminder about ticket agents. I can only imagine how much they appreciate people keeping a sense of humor about the situation.
Thanks for that – I know a lot of folks faced far worse delays than I did, and I’m glad it at least gave us a chance to laugh together about it.
But for all that, I’m still very, very glad I came. It had some of the best breakout session programming I’ve ever seen (I heard more than one Sophie’s-choice-level anguishing in the corridors over which session to go to, and which two or three that would mean missing) and, man, you make the WiFi work better than any other conference I’ve been to.
Really, though, it’s the people I get to talk to in between. Having to miss a little of that is the price of sketchnoting, and it must be far worse for NTEN folks actually staffing it: you don’t get the luxury of those long, spontaneous conversations in the corridor. You’re too busy making them possible for the rest of us.
Good lord, you travel a lot. (yes, I know: Tell me about it!)
And you’re absolutely right about gate agents.