The travel home from GPUG Amplify was pretty uneventful, although it was an early start to my day! My flight was at 6:00 am Pacific time, which meant a 4:00 am wake-up call to get to the airport on time and check in etc. That felt SO early despite it being later than I wake up at home (based on 7:00 am EST, converted time zone).
I'm very glad that I took the trip to Ontario, CA the night before to stay in a closer hotel, minutes away from the airport. The thought of trusting a shuttle or cab to get me to the airport on time (and waking up even earlier) just wasn't appealing. It would have been fun to hang out with some colleagues at the Marriott the night before but sleep and being on time was more important! I got to the airport on time, and got seated on time etc. My connection was through Salt Lake City again, and was a tight timeline, about 40 minutes. However, our flight in arrived earlier than scheduled, giving me slightly over an hour to make my next connection easily. Whew!
The flight to Toronto was easy, and I arrived around 3 pm EST, which gave me time to get in touch with my mom and take a detour to downtown Toronto for dinner before heading back home. Bonus!
Post Conference Thoughts
I thoroughly enjoyed the conference again this year, and I'm glad I attended. I love the size of the event. even though there were fewer attendees than last year (slightly, not by a lot I believe), the size is what appeals to me personally.
In my earlier post about why you should go to GPUG Amplify, I included a graphic that was created by Bob Buresh at GPUG. Having attended two of these events now, I'm not sure I would describe Amplify as it is described in the graphic, at least in the Audience suggested for the event.
I think the typical audience part of this was misleading, now that I have a chance to step back and think about the content offered. The C-Levels I have worked with would have not benefited from going to the conference, in terms of sessions relevant to what they need, although the networking would have been useful. I mean no offence to GPUG in any manner by stating that. I can envision the middle management level finding this very useful, those that are directly managing the GP users in their organization and aware of (hopefully) what functions they use, where there are pain points and where they wish to see process improvement, reporting or adding new functionality.
I found a lot of the sessions were aimed towards end users, in terms of tips, tricks etc., with content similar to what is at GPUG Summit. That's not a bad thing, but if we're hoping to draw a different audience, the topics may need to be revisited.
All in all, it is a great conference and I hope it continues. Finding the sweet spot in content and audience I think will be the key so it can ensure solid attendance for years to come.
