Over the past few days the company I work for has been planning to send me and a coworker of mine to a combination conference/celebration called Domopalooza, hosted by our data management provider. For three days, between April 7th and 9th (we are still working out the details on the flights, as well as the extra Domo “boot camp” for my coworker and I, as I will have to leave early to return in order to attend to my religious and spiritual commitments and will not be able to stay for the skiing on the Last Day of Unleavened Bread and the Sabbath immediately following). Having not been to a business conference before, and not having been to a conference that was not church related since my days as an undergraduate student at the University of Southern California, I would like to provide at least some details of the trip and my agenda for the trip, and some humorous comments about the agenda of others regarding the trip.

My schedule during the event is fairly ambitious. My coworker and I are dividing up the boot camp and the seminars between us, as there are three different boot camps (he is going for data acquisition and transformation as a database engineer, and I am going for data visualization as the reporting analyst), and four different seminar tracks. Between them there are at least two or three seminars in each section that I am interested in, so if my fellow data scientist takes the operations seminars as I would expect him to do, there are others (like the Marketing or Majordomo ones) that I would be taking notes on, for use in blog entries as well as discussions with others regarding the use of our data management system to serve company objectives. After all, my main goal at this particular conference would be to gain technical and networking expertise that will allow me to be a more effective and more skillful reporting analyst. Secondarily, I would like to have a good time.

It seems that this event is well-calculated for both ends. Although I am greatly pleased that the company hosting the event threw in a free registration, which will considerably lower costs, for I am generally very fond of freebies, I am a bit mystified that someone as obscure as myself would receive such attention. Judging from a look at the statistics of who is registering, I am definitely on the lower levels of those attending, many of whom are executives and managers and the like, rather than technicians like myself. Keynote speakers for the event include the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, executives in research firms, and Billy Beane, the data-driven manager for the Oakland Athletics, and one of the heroes of the sabermetrics movement in general, which seeks to use data to better inform the evaluation of athletes, an area of personal interest. Beyond the seminars and keynotes speeches, there are lunches that will aid in professional networking (I will probably be sitting with others involved in the insurance industry), and there are plenty of parties, and after parties, and receptions that will allow me to enjoy shirley temples as is my fashion while others are lubricated on stronger stuff.

Of course, this event is not only about working hard but also about playing hard. Depending on my per diem, and how much time I need to type up my analysis of the day’s speeches and seminars, I will be enjoying what the conference has to offer. One of the highlights of Domopalooza is a concert from Robin Thicke, Ludacris, and Kid Ink, that I expect to write a review on. Even if I don’t have a press pass, as a devoted blogger I suppose in some respects I will act a little bit like a journalist, as is my habit. Additionally, my coworker expects there to be a lot of very attractive women at the event, and wishes for me to be his wingman, so as to better aid and encourage his amorous pursuits. I do not expect to have any myself, but such friendliness as I expect will be very welcome, given that I expect to be friendly in my usual way. I do not expect to have much time for reading, except on the plane trip to and from Salt Lake City, but I do have at least one or two book tours scheduled, so those readers who appreciate my usual book-heavy posts will not be entirely disappointed. As for the rest, I expect Domopalooza to provide quite an adventure.