Conference Opener

Well, today I had to get serious and go to the conference. Unfortunately, a bad bit of sausage shut me down for the morning and the DPE luncheon. The afternoon session I attended was on a training program for Virtual Assistants. A virtual assistant provides personal IT support to an executive. This means everything from creating websites to professionalizing reports.

Afterwards, I went to the keynote conference. The speaker was Jim Morris -- the guy on whom The Rookie is based. He tells his life story from a very humorous standpoint. Apparently, Jim is happily teaching again and does these motivational speeches on a part-time basis. The central theme of his speech was being a dream creator vs. dream killer. As teachers, we have the power to be dream creators or dream killers like no other role in a child's life. Even when a parent is a dream killer, it is possible for a child to overcome this, albeit with great difficulty, if others around him/her are dream creators. If you ever get a chance to hear Jim speak, you should.

After the keynote, I went to the ISBE (International Society of Business Educators) general meeting. This year's ISBE conference is to be in Australia. Next year's is in Switzerland with Denver being the 2012 site. Connie and I wanted to go to Australia for this year's, but it overlaps EAA, so maybe 2011...

To end the evening, Connie and I went to dinner at Kansas City Barbeque. It was used as a set in Top Gun. The service was a little slow, as it was packed with Marines and sailors from the task group that arrived recently, but the food was good. A real chill was in the air on the way home, so Connie borrowed my suit jacket on the way back to the hotel to end our day.