October 8, 2012: Off to SpiceWorld Austin 2012

Today is the kick off of SpiceWorld 2012, this is my fourth time attending SpiceWorld.  I don’t like that SpiceWorld starts on a Monday this year but it does make it nice that today is a holiday at work so I was able to sleep in after last night’s late night party and we were able to putter around the house and take care of things before getting in the car around noon, Dominica and I, and driving down to Austin for the day.

The drive down went fine.  It is hard to believe that I have not been in Austin for an entire year.  It is crappy that we live so close yet never take the time to go down to one of our favourite cities.  I guess we really don’t get much time to enjoy living in Dallas either, though.  Life just flies by too quickly.

We got down to Austin with plenty of time to get to our hotel at the AT&T Conference Center and get checked in.  Of course I ran into lots of people even early on like Jenn and Katie from Unitrends, Rob Dunn and others and ended up hanging out with a lot of people early on before even getting a chance to settle in.

We had a large entourage together to head to the first activity of the day which was the SpiceLeader (those who run regional SpiceCorps groups) meetup down on Sixth.  Danielle had driven down separately from us and she and Katie, who are also staying at AT&T right down the hall from us, met up with us at this point.  So about a dozen of us walked downtown to the first event.

The first even was just an hour long and just drinks.  There were some snacks but all meat-oriented so I didn’t partake in any of those.  Even if I had wanted to I was swamped talking with people as they arrived so it was a very busy hour.  It was a nice introduction for Dominica and Danielle who have never met any SpiceHeads before except for those from SpiceCorps DFW.  So this really all worked out extremely well that they knew a few people from SpiceCorps (DFW group sends a lot of people down to SpiceWorld every year) and then had this soft introduction to SpiceWorld with a very limited group so that they got introduced in stages.

After the initial part it was on to “The Stage” for the main kick off party.  That was the party that went until around eleven at night.  It’s always great getting to SpiceWorld and reconnecting with the people from past years and seeing the people that I talk to online day in and day out.  There are always old friends and new faces.  This year Kim knew us from SpiceCorps and even though she had been to SpiceWorld in the past had not really gotten introduced to anyone in the “in” crowd so this year she got to join us and actually get to know people.

From the main party it was, as it always is, off to Touche’s for the real beginning of the SpiceWorld party.  We’ve been starting off the SpiceWorld “in crowd” event now for four years ever since I was first taken to Touche’s by the VC firm after the second night of SpiceWorld 2009 for flaming Dr. Peppers – now a SpiceWorld tradition.

It was quite a night and I don’t remember most of it.  I know that we moved on from Touche’s but don’t know where we went from there.  Everyone had a blast.  It was really great that Dominica was able to go with me for a change.  We definitely appreciated getting a chance to really go out and not have to worry about getting home.  That does not happen very often at all.

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