One mighty full day

I'm not sure where to begin telling about the day. It was packed full of excellent learning, starting with the worship service at Grace Valley Church. Pastor Steve Wunderink took the Ephesian Prayer apart word for word, revealing its riches. I especially liked what he said about the Spirit making us bigger on the inside - like a balloon being inflated so that Christ could dwell in our hearts (verse 6). He also traced the Greek words the wind through the prayer: dunamis (power), pneuma (spirit), agape (love), gnoska & gnosis (to know & knowledge), huper (more). And how the word 'Amen' has come down to us unchanged from Hebrew, to Greek, to Latin, to many modern languages. This was excellent grounding for the rest of my day.

I stayed after the service only long enough to chat with the pastor's wife Frankie for a bit and pass on greetings from our church in Baldwin. Then it was back to Mandalay Bay for the lunch buffet where I met up with my colleague Chris. We chatted with several attendees from RealNetworks (the folks who bring us RealPlayer.

The first session I attended after lunch was a panel discussion hosted by Lund Food Holdings, which owns and operates a chain of upscale grocery stores in the Twin Cities. I used to shop at Lund's years ago when I lived in a trendy neighborhood in Mineapolis. It was the one place that reliably stocked Haagen Dasz chocolate chocolate mint. So even though the particular topic under discussion (their 15 week fast launch of Teradata) didn't overlap much with what I'm working on, there was still a connection on a gut level, so to speak.
The next presentation, from 2 data architects from Cisco on 'ELT and Push Down Optimization', landed much closer to home and I'm going to schedule some time with one of the presenters to really pick his brain.
The last event for the day was a cocktail reception for customers and account managers: free drinks and yummy snacks and great giveaways. I would have loved to have won the Lance Armstrong autographed jersey or the Bose outdoor speakers or one of the $100 gift cards but I walked away empty handed. That was the only disapointment of this great day.