The Other Part of My Job

It’s been a long time, I shouldn’t have left you
Without a strong rhyme to step to
Think of how many weak shows you slept through
Time’s up, I’m sorry I kept you

-Eric B & Rakim, I Know You Got Soul

I’m sorry I missed last Sunday’s post but I’m hear to pick your spirits up with a mid-week report…

Unlike the last time I skipped posting on a Sunday, I had a good reason. Over the last 10 days I’ve been extremely busy. As I mentioned my previous post, last week was the end of the quarter which brings the pressure in the sales industry. I don’t mind that at all it just brought on some long hours. I also went to two conferences in the last two weeks. I think I will be going to a decent number of them so I decided to keep track of them in a new tab at the top of the page.

The first one I went to was a two-day, South East Asian Private Equity Conference. It was not exciting to say the least. What makes these conferences good for my company and makes them worthwhile for me, is if there are a lot of people attending. There were only about 70 attendees to this conference and most didn’t return for the second day. It was especially not worth my time because of the pressure to close back in the office. It was good to get my feet wet at my first conference but it was altogether a negative rather than a positive.

I also attended an Islamic Finance Conference yesterday. This one was much better for a lot of reasons except one. There were about 250 people there which kept me busy most of the day. It was also a one day conference which got right down to brass tacks, took care of business, and ended. The one problem I had with it was the post conference networking. After my first conference, there was a 90 window of free cocktails at the hotel bar following the conference. It was a nice touch and a nice end to a day spent mostly standing around. I wasn’t going Mary Ann’s on this bar but a few Heinekens were consumed. However, because the second conference was on ISLAMIC finance there were no adult beverages to be had. I, along with my two colleagues, had a soda and left promptly.

It is understood that once you put your time in at some of the local conferences, they will send you to some outside the country. I am looking forward to seeing where my next conference is. I am hoping for something in Europe. The guy who sits across from me is off to Stockholm at the end of the month which sounds awesome.

Last weekend, I caught up on some sleep, played some street hockey again and collected this poster from the frame maker I sent it to:

It is the ‘05-’06 Eddie Aikau Invitational Commemorative Poster. I’m guessing most people who are reading this don’t know who he is. Please educate yourself here…Eddie Aikau

Adios,

BD