The morning started with an 8 am meeting of ActiveRainers at the convention center. Matt and Jon were there from ActiveRain, and it was great to meet, talk and question them in person. Mary McKnight and Bill French were there, and decided they agreed on most things and as Bill said, "we're only about half a degree apart". Mary's husband John contributed, and then became involved in a photography discussion with Jon. Angus "Moo" Woodbury was there, and Teri Isner, and Wynne Achatz, and Linda Davis, and several soon to be well-known bloggers as well. Matt shared a little about where he sees ActiveRain going, and of course all of us quiet ones had suggestions for him to make it even better.
We only had a brief few hours in the trade show, before having to catch a plane back to Tampa. Didn't see a lot that was new, but did stop to see (and learn from) several of our veteran vendors: Visual Tours, Beyondee, The CD Guy, Express Copy, Real Pro, The Gooder Group. Learned some new uses for visual tours when we stopped at their booth.
I had a change to play with a Lenovo convertible tablet, and even Tami was wowed with some of the things you can do with it. They have a sale going on until mid-December, and will be coming out with a new and better tablet the middle of November. Nonetheless, I'm going to control myself and despite the free upgrade to Vista, will wait until they are shipped with Vista installed - too close not to do that.
There were more 1031 exchange companies there than we've seen before and also more rental companies and rental software companies. Didn't find any real WOWs, but then in 3 hours we couldn't see everything - even though we walked every aisle we had to go back a second time to find a few we wanted to see but missed.
I visited several booths of developers in Panama, but couldn't find one who could tell me the water temperature at Panama City in the month of January. Some said they'll find out and contact me - will let you know when that happens.
Glad we got to see part of the NAR convention, New Orleans, old and new friends. Nonetheless, happy to be back home as well.
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