The conference proper got underway today.
But first the weather. They said, come to California, it’ll be beautiful. Hmm, well in terms of the weather, they couldn’t have been more wrong. The west coast of America is experiencing what they are calling an atmospheric river. Apparently a large wet air mass stretching as far away as Hawaii is inundating the west Coast. And although we are a little inland and south of the worst, it’s been raining here since I arrived. Some parts of California have received upwards of 5 feet of snow. The east coast of America is in a similar boat with blasts, cold air and snow coming from the north. I’ll be experiencing that in a few days time.
Back to the conference.
I’ll leave my room at about 7.00am to check out the main conference area and I’m surprised by the amount of people already up and about. The keynote address starts in just under an hour and people are obviously keen to grab their seats. I walk around, familiarising myself with the layout of the conference rooms: there about 30 of them – a combination of small intimate rooms, larger rooms. all the way up to the grand ballroom. It is a very large conference space and as I find a seat and plan my list of seminars, a continual stream of conference attendees past me. At about 7:45am I walk to the grand ballroom to grab a seat for the keynote address, however, I’m advised the room is already full. Bugger. I return to my seat in the foyer and decide to tune into the keynote address using the live streaming facility. I’m not the only one. Thousands and thousands of others running in as well. It seems the grand ballroom, as large as it is, can not cater for all attendees.
I listen to the address and take some notes. The key theme is around accessible design and bedding accessible designed into everything we do at the outset rather than an afterthought. This is a strategy that we are using at Vision Australia, specifically within the digital accessibility team. It is good to hear this concept reinforced.
After the keynote address, I head off to the first meeting of the day. I meet with the team from WeWalk. WeWalk is a digital cane system that offers feedback to the user via haptics an an attached mobile device. A really innovative product. We have a great discussion.
Next I attend a number of sessions on a range of topics, including presentations from the Smith-Kettle Eye Research Institute, Amazon, tactile labelling and Apple.
In between these sessions Peter and I meet with Vispero, a key partner supplier.
It is a hectic day and when 5.30 comes around I am pretty tired. I take it easy in my room for an hour. Also, make some notes, check email and get ready for dinner.
Dinner tonight is with the Royal National Institute for the Blind, some colleagues from the United Kingdom, and some colleagues from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. We meet in the lobby of the hotel and arrange some caps to take us to the restaurant. The rain is tumbling down. The driver, thinking of doing us a favour. Drop us off in a little car park and Point is in the direction of the restaurant. we can’t locate the restaurant in the car park and ventured to the street, where we get pretty much soaked walking to the restaurant. We’ve actually find it. I think we must’ve look like a bunch of drowned rats to the restaurant staff as we walk through the front door: no umbrellas, no raincoats. Remember we’re coming to California, where the sun was always shining.
We dry off a little in the lobby of the restaurant and a show into our seats. It’s a great night lots of collaborative conversations about how we can work together. Lots of ideas, partnerships that we can form. We enjoy wonderful seafood-based meal. I enjoy some Atlantic salmon and calamari.
It’s great night and as we leave the restaurant, the rain is still coming down like cats and dogs as with dash for the taxi.
I’m exhausted as I get back to my room and fall into bed, and for the first time, I’ll stairway have a really good night sleep
