A Week in the City

I had a great week in Minneapolis, although the two conferences I was attending kept me very busy. The first was for users of a software program we're implementing at work, and was small--about 35 or 40 people. That was very productive, and as a bonus it served as a kind of freshman orientation for the main conference, the national conference for the professional organization for people in my field. It was the biggest ever, at about 7,000 attendees and was therefore kind of overwhelming at times. But I had some productive meetings, learned a lot, met lots of people and especially, I ate lots of good food.

Minneapolis is a great city, and if it weren't for the killer temperatures in winter, I'd move there in a second. There are a ton of fantastic restaurants, where I ate the aforementioned good food. It's clean, the people are friendly, they have great art and a huge live music scene (on Thursday evening people started lining up with their sleeping bags to wait to buy Prince tickets, but there are other local artists and groups for all audiences), it's big enough to have all the amenities you need but small enough that you can easily cover the downtown on foot, with a comprehensive bus system and an ecologically-friendly light rail. It also has some very cool Art Deco buildings and random statues scattered throughout the city, including one of Mary Tyler Moore throwing her hat in the air.

I hope to go back some time when I have a little more free time to see more of the sights. Click on the "Spoonbridge and Cherry" sculpture below to see all of my photos from the trip.