#smpssrc

Dear Gus,

Laura and Dan gave a presentation to a packed house at the conference this morning. Derek and Jamie rode back to Little Rock with me.

Dad

Dear Gus,

Opening night of the conference, where I’m supposed to be networking, but I ended up hanging out with Garver folks. Lucia and John are from the Georgetown office, though, so this feels like networking. 

Dad

Conference Breakfast Buffet. Royal Sonesta Hotel (Catering). New Orleans, Louisiana. 1.20.2023.

NOTE TO SELF: Dry croissant, hard biscuits, not enough protein. Plastic fruit.

Conference Breakfast Buffet. Royal Sonesta Hotel (Catering). New Orleans, Louisiana. 1.19.2023.

NOTE TO SELF: Standard breakfast buffet. The French toast was doing it for me this morning.

Dear Gus & Magnus,

At the conference's welcome reception tonight at the Royal Sonesta, there were calls for each chapter to get a picture together in front of the step-and-repeat, so I took a picture with the Southeast Louisiana Chapter, and just like they do every year, half of them say, "Wait, who is that guy?"

At one point, all four Garver people were standing together in the courtyard, so we decided to go up and get our picture together. But somewhere in the 25 steps between where we were standing and where we were going, Whitney and I lost the other two Garver folks and they never showed up to take the picture. The courtyard wasn't even that crowded. Our minds were blown, but we decided to take a picture anyway.

I come to these conferences mostly to network, but in the moment, it feels like a lot of work to build superficial relationships across the industry. Will I really ever reach out to these people? I never think I will, even when I'm trading business cards them. But Whitney is a good example of how we actually did communicate. We met at a welcome reception years ago. Then she put me on her conference programs committee when she chaired it, and then when she chaired the conference, she chose me to chair the programs committee. And then when she had to choose a replacement to chair the conference, she chose me. At some point as I followed in her SRC footsteps we became actual friends and not just people who see each other at conferences. And a couple of years ago when Garver needed to hire a marketer in Alabama, I recruited her to join us and got a referral bonus for it, so... I guess I'll keep looking for opportunities to trade business cards with people.

Dad.

Dear Gus,

As I mentioned before, I’m set to co-chair the next SMPS Southern Regional Conference, but apparently when they sent my info into the national organization, they finally picked up on the fact that I haven’t ever joined. So I had to join an organization on the fly, and I had to pick one within the Southern Region (Arkansas falls into the Missouri Valley Region), so today I joined the Southeast Louisiana Chapter. When I showed up to the chapter photo, some of these people were like, “Who is that guy?”

Dad

Sandwiches (Half-Roast Beef, Half-Chicken Salad. Westin Hotel Catering. San Antonio, Texas. 1.31.2019.

Chicken salad was dry and mostly bread. Other sandwich was loaded with mayo.