Barbeque and an Arch – ACTE 2011 Recap

Recently I traveled to the annual ACTE conference that was held in St. Louis, MO. I traveled with all guys from our company, and it has been pretty interesting trying to keep them all on task and under control!

Travel

It was a great experience; we arrived on Tuesday afternoon and had a great evening relaxing after our long day of traveling that consisted of a two hour car ride to the Las Vegas Airport, about a minute train ride to the gate, then a three hour flight to St. Louis, a five minute bus ride to the rental car counter, and a fifteen minute drive to the hotel. Yes, you read that right; excluding a boat we pretty much covered all modes of transportation.

Set-up and event

The next day it was time to head over to the booth and set-up. Everything went well and thanks to Kari, our graphic designer, the booth we have takes about an hour to set-up. As we headed out to the parking garage, we noticed a sign that said cash only. Living in the modern age that we do it was shocking and of course we had no cash on us. Well we talked the nice parking attendant (I won’t name her just in case her boss by a small chance reads this) into letting us out on the honor that we would bring her back the two dollars we owed her. We went and got some supplies and brought the money right back to her.

That night we held a reception at our hotel; it went off without a hitch and everyone had a great time. So thank you to everyone who attended the event and to everyone who helped make it a success!

Show Time and chow

So on Thursday it was time to get down to business and start talking with all of the wonderful educators that made it out to this year’s show. It was a great show with a lot of enthusiastic people and a great energy. People were loving the giveaways, and of course gobbling up the Dots candies that we put out.

After a really long day on our feet, we all decided that when in St. Louis you better eat some BBQ. So we asked around and got a tip that Pappy’s Smokehouse was the best place in town, but that we better make it there pretty early because once they run out of stuff it is just gone. We got lost, but eventually found our way there and boy was it worth it. We ordered the Adam Bomb named after Adam Richmond from the television show Man vs. Food. It was a lot of really good food and we all ate way too much, but everyone was in consensus that they would recommend it to anyone who ever visits St. Louis. The food was so good that we ended up getting another Adam Bomb for take out on Friday.

We made our way back home and back to the LearnKey offices. Sad to leave our new friends and the great food, but excited to be back home!

A few pictures from the event: