We had an awesome day, the first of the conference. We went to see several speakers; Jihn Coppolino, Joe Yaiullo, Kevin Kohen, Charlie Veron (a brilliant fellow Aussie) & we caught the end of Tony Vargas & Richard Ross.
We finally managed a break and grabbed a quick lunch in our room between speakers and then toured the exhibit hall. The exhibits are more spaced out than previous years and as usual freebies abounded :-)
We got back to our room about six, time to shower and change, grab a drink and we headed to the welcome reception. It was pretty good, knowing lots of people after attending the last two years helped. There was a live band three of whom were Joe Yoyo's boys and they were pretty good too. Loads of lamb and chicken on sticks and awesome samosas (Pete estimates he had 30 of those lol) for starters followed by the American fave huge legs of beef carved at stations with little dinner buns and loads of options like mustards, horseradish etc. the only veg offerings were mashed potato or mashed sweet potato - this is America after all lol. The extras offered with the mashes were typical for here but a bit mind boggling AKA stomach churning for the non-Americans including dried cranberries and whipped cream, whipped cream?? Andy Listers English boss wanted dessert, there was none so he got some sweet potato, added cranberries and whipped cream lol the U.S. Habit of adding sweet things to their veg like cinnamon and probably sugar probably made it almost like a pumpkin pie so I get where he was coming from but I wasn't going to follow his example.
We were invited to some after parties. The first was on the top floor in a massive suite with awesome views, it even had a piano! It was jam packed with many gurus in attendance. An open bar meant it was very entertaining even when all I did was observe. After an hour or so we went to the reef.com part, known as the wildest party which most years is shut down by security or, as happened last year, the cops. Again a big suite but no piano lol. It was stuffy and hot, the A/C struggling to cope with so many people so despite there again being an open bar we didn't stay long. While there Josh got an invite to a more intimate party in the MASNA suite so we moved again.
Thus was the mist fun of the night, we stayed over three hours. Lots of laughs with super friendly people. Again an open bar and pizza at about 2.30. Kevin who'd demanded food had crashed out in one of the bedrooms by the time it got there so he missed out but we enjoyed it :-). We got back to our room about 3.45am having had a great night.