Insight 2009

[Gerald Cox]

Contrary to my previous expectations, I recently found out that I will be able to attend Insight this year. Due to a great suggestion of one of our forum contributers, I've created this forum to help facilitate communications while at the conference. Hopefully both attendees and non-attendees will find this useful.

With last year's experience under my belt, I'm excited about this year and feel better prepared to soak it all in. I've dusted off my unused Twitter account to see if I can figure out how to utilize it while at the conference. You can follow my escapades at http://twitter.com/GeraldCox. If any other attendees are interested in joining me in the twitter experiment, feel free to post here.

[Gerald Cox]

Insight is over and I'm back at home. I stayed an extra day because an additional night in a hotel versus flying on Friday was pretty much a wash. The Friday night stay was $128 at the Orlando World Center with AAA membership where as it was $249 a night during the conference. A hotel rep said they cannot offer any discounts on the conference rate because it is a contracted group rate. They explained that this is because food and other things are included, however, according to the Deltek Insight website: “conference activities and meals” are included in the conference registration fee. This is my second time staying in the hotel of the conference. Next time, I think I will seriously consider reserving a room separately in either the same hotel or another. Either way, I expect to save several hundred dollars by not taking advantage of the “group rate”.

I hear that Insight will be in DC next year. This will be pretty convenient for me as it will be within driving distance from Central Virginia. Considering this, I think there is a good chance that I will be attending next year.

As with last year, I got to meet a lot of interesting people willing to share some pretty inventive and creative ideas about Vision. This year’s conference was a great experience and I was happy to bring our Marketing Coordinator along to see how other firms are taking advantage of CRM and Proposals. Both of us are excited to get back to work and start implementing some of the things we learned at Insight.