Coming attractions
posted by Sarah
I greatly enjoyed my time in Vancouver for DocTrain West.

Unfortunately, the process of getting to and from Vancouver is shaping up to be one of the "typical" travel nightmares. Outbound, I missed a connection (because of weather) by a few minutes, which resulted in a six-hour penalty in travel time.

Inbound back to RDU, I'm writing this on the Vancouver to Dallas plane, which is currently parked at the gate in Vancouver and shows no signs of departing anytime soon. Now, I'd prefer that they fix the hydraulic leak before we go, but it seems as though lately, the on-time rates have gone south. (Hmmm. I live in the South and it occurs to me that this metaphor is a bit locale-ist.) let's try again...the on-time rates have gone down the toilet. (oops. That's sure to offend someone and also lead to Google search hits I'd prefer not to have.) ....the on-time rates really s*** (this is getting worse instead of better). ...the airlines appear to be having some challenges (cough, cough) with their already lousy on-time operations. [Update: We departed almost three hours late with a new, non-leaking hydraulic component.] [Update2: I'm posting this from DFW.]

Anyway, I assume I'll get back at some point. Meanwhile, the conference itself was fun. Got to catch up with lots of people, saw some interesting presentations, and did two sessions that seemed to go reasonably well.

This is only the second time I've done a hands-on workshop in a conference context. Attempting to do one of these sessions is right behind high places, spiders, and eggplant on my list of phobias.

Why? I have little or no control over installation and configuration issues. For an XSL workshop, the minimum requirements are a Java runtime and an XSL parser (both free and open source and therefore a bit challenging to install). A text editor intended for programming (such as Oxygen) would be nice, too. It's impossible to get everyone configured ahead of time, so we end up scrambling to make everything work at the beginning of class. And then we have essentially infinite possible problems ranging from problems with wireless connections to platform variations to security problems (as in, you can't install anything because IT has locked your machine down).

This time around, things actually went extremely well. We had the usual issues, but everything got resolved (which isn't always the case). Although I had rather a large group for a hands-on session, we stayed on track with the schedule and even crammed in some extra material. (Private note to participants: Sorry about the exploding brain problem.) My favorite "problem" in this workshop was in attempting to help one participant. I started typing something and got unexpected input, which was because my touch-typing doesn't work on a non-U.S. keyboard. My attempts to locate the <, >, :, and = keystrokes were truly pathetic. The keyboard owner was nice enough not to laugh at me as she pointed to the correct keys.

Anyway, I'll be attempting this particular trick again at the upcoming Trends in Technical Communication (STC UK) event in Birmingham, so if you're interested in a fun-filled day of declarative programming, you should join us!

After Birmingham, I'll be attending X-Pubs in London. At that conference, I'm presenting the live version of our Web 2.0 white paper. We are attempting to provide some insight into how technical communication and user-generated content will intersect.

If you'll be at either of these events, please let me know.

And finally, after a nudge from a coworker, I have set up a Twitter account. You can find me at okeefe_scr. I'm not sure where that experiment will go, but I thought I'd give it a try.

Labels: conferences, doctrainwest08, travel, web 2.0

6:20 PM Permalink | |

 
Well, at least I don't have DVT. Yet.
posted by Sarah
Today's trip to Vancouver for DocTrain West started harmlessly enough. An 8 a.m. flight out of Raleigh/Durham (RDU) left pretty much on time. Matt and I were on-board; Sheila is booked on a later flight.

But then, a thunderstorm hit DFW (at 10 in the morning??) and so our plane circled Waco for about an hour.

When we landed at DFW, it was 10:58 a.m. The outbound flight to Vancouver was scheduled to leave at 10:55 a.m. I figured the storms probably delayed the outbound flight, too. They did...until 11:05 a.m. And you know what, you can't make it from gate C35 to gate D20 in 7 minutes.

So I called the nice people at American. They offered me the next nonstop flight, six hours later. Ugh. Oh, and my lovely preselected, UPGRADED seat on the previous flight? No? How about maybe an exit row? Nope, not that either. So, sit around in DFW for six hours and then another four hours in a lousy seat? Ick.

Off we go to visit the nice people at the Admirals Club and see if they can help. They took my (original) boarding pass, did some typing, and then looked puzzled. "Hmmm. The system doesn't think you're in this seat." That would be because the plane left without me. See, I'm standing right here and the plane is up in the sky with my seat.

Lots more tapping. Eventually, we rebooked onto a flight to San Francisco (SFO) with a connection onto Alaska Airlines up to Vancouver. The agent assured us that checked bags would be pulled and would get onto these flights. We wanted to believe her.

DFW to SFO was uneventful. Got some decent seats, but sadly no upgrades.

Arrived in SFO, changed terminals, had to re-clear security (booo, pet peeve). Wandered down to Alaska Airlines.

And then a miracle occurred. They announced that four first-class seats were available for a nominal fee, first-come, first-served, and we were standing less than 10 feet from the podium. Wooo!

I was quite impressed with the operations at Alaska Airlines. Cheerful, happy, and competent.

So finally, we arrive in Vancouver, where the sun was shining (!), six hours later than scheduled.

Last stop, baggage claim. Watch the carousel turn. Look for baggage. Don't see it.

Meanwhile, the DFW-YVR flight arrived at about the same time. On a whim, we checked it, and sure enough, there were Matt's bags.

Things could be worse. For starters, I don't have DVT. Yet.

Oh, and I'll probably get extra miles from my cross-country jaunt.

And Sheila? Last I heard, she had been rerouted from RDU-DFW-YVR to RDU-STL-SEA-YVR with arrival moved from 7 p.m. to "around midnight."

Labels: travel

1:26 AM Permalink | |