I clearly remember last year's announcement that YearlyKos '07 was going to be right here in beautiful Chicago, the only hometown I've had for 40 years.
I was so excited!
I registered a couple of months ago. $300 was a bit steep, but I could swing it this year. I mean, talk about a layup: McCormick place is about 20 minutes from my house. I had it all planned out: I'd live there. I'd delurk. I'd meet everyone.
And then a bunch of funny things happened on the way to the convention...
It started Thursday at work. The original plan was to take off a little early, maybe after the markets close at 3:00, and head down there to register and get the lay of the land. McCormick Place is a monster, and I wanted to have a game plan in place for the sessions I really wanted to see on Friday and Saturday. But the market (and more importantly for me, the software we use to trade) had different ideas, with insane volume and volatility. We had a number of software problems as a result, and leaving before they were resolved wasn't going to fly.
I ended up getting out of there just in time to get home and put a kid to bed. I was still psyched, though, so I jumped in the car and headed down for some of the Thursday night social activities. I was disappointed to see the registration desk had already shut down for the day, and I couldn't get my nifty laminate and those bags I saw everyone with. One unfortunate artifact of not having an ID tag was that several Kossacks I encountered at the Pub Quiz eyed me a bit suspiciously. Was I an interloper? A wingnut spy? Don't get me wrong, everyone I met was very nice. But I definitely did encounter some healthy suspicion. I hung around for a while, noting that Pub Quiz, while challenging, was not the most riveting spectator sport I'd ever encountered. I don't really "know" many Kossacks, even in the online sense, so I didn't have anyone to hang out with, and left around 10:30, determined to return earlier Friday afternoon to pick up where I'd left off...
Again the market and our trading system had a different idea. Jammed at work, no escape. When I did limp out of there, upon further reflection, I didn't want to go the absentee parent route two nights in a row. And it was really goddamn hot. So I decided to hang out at home, chill with the missus, surf a bit, bound and determined to hit it hard Saturday morning.
Then late Friday night, I got a last minute email from my post-college roommates who now live in Palo Alto. They were here to visit their parents and they had a hectic weekend planned, but some time opened up for them on Saturday afternoon and they were hoping to hang out. Absolutely no way I could say "no." So Saturday morning's planned trip to the near south side to find blogvana now morphed into a frantic effort to clean up the house while entertaining a three-year-old and still getting to the store to buy beer and brats before they arrived. It was all worth it and I'd make the choice again in a heartbeat. No offense intended, fellow nutrooters, but seldom seen old friends have to take priority over unmade friends, right?
Saturday night was never in the works: I had booked a gig long ago. I was actually a bit relieved (selfish, I know) when I saw the Meet the Leaders panel went kaboom. At least I wasn't going to miss it. I played a street festival up in Edgebrook, sitting in with a buddy's band. It was a fine gig, if you don't count the driving rain, the resulting poor attendance, and the dubiously grounded PA system. You haven't known fear until you're approaching a live microphone with your lips, standing on a soaking wet stage, while holding a guitar connected to a damp tube amplifier with 450 volts coursing around inside it. I could see little steamy sizzles every time a raindrop hit the lighting cans, and I wondered if I might turn into a much larger steamy sizzle myself that evening.
Anyway, by the time Sunday rolled around, there wasn't much left for me. An interfaith service isn't really my thing, to put it politely...and I was hungover dehydrated and tired, destined to be planted on my couch, at least to the extent that my kids would allow me to be.
So, my total YearlyKos experience amounted to about 90 minutes of anonymous lurking on Thursday night. But what other outcome could reasonably be expected when all the distractions, responsibilities, and pleasures of a typical summer weekend at my home were competing for my time? There's a reason corporations hold their yearly meetings away from headquarters, and it's precisely this: you need to get away from all the madness and/or routine of your daily life to focus exclusively on the tasks at hand.
I'm still not sure if I'll attend next year's event either. My kids will be 4 and 1.5 next summer, and I hate missing even a single evening's fun, much less 3 or 4 to go out of town. It's also a lot to ask of my wife. My business is also still something of a fledgling, and so leaving them to fend for themselves doesn't quite sit right, either. So I'll probably participate via Second Life next year -- gives me an excuse to learn it. I'm sure I'll show up in meatspace somewhere down the line.
In any case, I still feel great about the investment. No regrets. I can fairly say, years from now when there are tens of thousands of participants at Netroots Nation or whatever they may be calling it, that I was a proud attendee at the second YearlyKos, way back in the day.
cross posted at my blog, Schmidlap's Kurtoses