Tag, US, you're it

First thing’s first – FYI: for some reason Belgium only lets you have one carryon to fly to the US. That doesn’t mean one item and one personal item, it means ONE item. I had to be that guy going off to the side to rearrange my luggage to make it fit. Luckily because of my Gold Medallion status, my bag limit is 70 lbs. and not the normal 50. The flight sucked and I woke up a lot during my Ambien haze.

As soon as I got home, I had 2 hours to change out my bags and then it was back to the airport. Crazy, I know. My company had a technical conference at The Biltmore in Miami which I didn’t want to miss. Last year it was in Atlanta, which was convenient, but this year I had to use miles to make the trip. We have an annual Rock Band Competition which is really fun and I was also presenting an application that my team developed on a project. This ‘DemoJam’ is a competition held by the head of the company to find the best app to roll out for the whole company. There are also classes and seminars to enrich our careers, as well as lots of networking events. Given the nature of our company, most people don’t get to see each other except at this event.

I had been in Miami back in December for Summit Club and got invited there based on my application presentation last year. I was hoping for something similarly as cool. It was great to meet up with people I hadn’t seen in a while, but the jet lag was killing me all weekend. I woke up at 4 am on Friday morning and couldn’t really go back to sleep. I struggled to get through my classes and skipped a few for naps.

I presented one of about 5 or 6 applications to the 300 or so people that came to the conference. I was a bit nervous, but have been getting used to talking in front of people at work. Plus, I know the app inside and out. I felt kind of weird being the only person up there since I only had a hand in its creation. Three or 4 other people on the project also chipped in, but I was the only one to volunteer to present. Our big boss said that he would decide the winner (and unknown prize) the next day.

On Saturday night UK was playing WVU in the Elite 8 (boo) at the same time we were prepping for the Rock Band Competition. Tag, my band mate and fellow UK alum, were huddled in front of a laptop while our other two members got ready. Once we saw that the game was going downhill we focused on rocking the house. We decided months ago (yes, we did plan this far in advance) to dress up like ZZ Top and call ourselves the ZZ Sources. It’s a twist on one of the methods we use in our company, don’t worry about it. Later, we found out that the competition was using Beatles Rock Band, but it was too late to go back on our costumes.

The prizes were $1000 for 1st place, a nice set of headphones for each 2nd place, and steak knives for the last two. I thought the steak knives were a joke, but apparently not. The preliminary rounds were on Thursday and Friday and were based solely on points (so no one dressed up in their costumes, saving them for Saturday night). We made it through the prelims and were among 4 bands in the finals Songs couldn’t be repeated, so we had a little draft to see who got to sing what. Being the singer in my band, I got to choose. I don’t know that many Beatles songs and a lot of them are repetitive and slow. I’m not sure how I got lucky, but I got my two top choices: 'I Saw Her Standing There' and 'Twist and Shout'.

As I watched the other bands, I knew we had a chance. Our costumes were hilarious, as you can see, and we had high energy songs to get the crowd to participate. They set it up like American Idol with three celebrity judges – the pro tennis players that we sponsor (Melanie Oudin being one). You were supposed to text to a phone number to vote for each band. The first band had the upper hand and posted their texting number on Facebook. Well played. Tom (the company founder) decided to use an unscientific applause-o-meter instead (he starts with his hands together and raises one depending on the noise level).

We were 3rd on stage and ROCKED OUT. I’m hoping I can find a video, I haven’t had this much fun on stage in my life. People got up and danced, they were singing, I thought we had it in the bag. The last group was made up of partners and senior consultants from the company. While they were better technically at playing the instruments (they practiced for the competition with their kids), we sounded better vocally and got the crowd going more. Despite this, when it came time for the applause-o-meter, they won. Second place went to a group of our clients that attended the weekend, since they were our guests. Politics. We repeated our 3rd place finish and I guess I’m getting steak knives in the mail. Yippee.

The last bit of important news from the weekend is that the confirmed that I would be going to Australia and it would be until sometime in October. Finally, I have a definitive answer. Oh, yeah. And I won an iPad for my application presentation, sweet! I’ll be flying out on Monday, April 5th for the first leg of my project. They’re letting me come home for a week every 90 days or so to renew my visa and work from home. It’s crazy that I’m only going to be home for a week, but I’m looking forward to the trip! I also started reading ‘Up In the Air’ since I liked the movie so much. I’ll report on that when I finish it. Talk to you down under!