DC10!

It's May, so that means that it's 'conference time' at work. We held our user and developer conference a couple weeks ago - it's called the Dynamic Church Conference (or as we call it around the office, DC10). This year I was on the committee to plan the conference, so I had many responsibilities and it got kind of crazy leading up to "D-Day".

Here's a picture of "IT Central" - those IT guys had to set up countless laptops with presentations, projectors, screens, etc. A lot of work went on in this little room! In this picture, they were unpacking all of the equipment - a BIG job...

Here's Tiffany (the main conference planner) laying on the floor next to my desk - after she found out that the conference T-shirts were lost somewhere in Dallas! LOL

This is where the conference was held this year - Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, TX. It is a HUGE church (27,000 people attend each weekend).

And like previous years, my boss (our CFO) was the MC for all of the general sessions:

And when you agree to be the MC, apparently you also agree to wear a sombrero, stand on a chair and welcome people to the meet-n-greet (which had a Tex-Mex theme)!

How many guys does it take to carry the VP of Development around??? Just one.

The church was HUGE inside, but the layout actually worked out great for us - it's a fabulous facility. We had over 500 attendees and then about 85 employees running the conference. A busy place!

Here I am on the second day (it's a 3-day conference, with one set up day before). For some reason, my allergies went crazy up there in Plano and my eyes got all red and painful, so I had to rock the glasses for the second and third day. Grrrrr......

Here's Kingsley (our VP of Development - the same guy that was being carried in the pic above) giving a keynote about the future of our software.....

A packed house in the student worship center!

My co-workers handing out ice cream treats after the Networking Lunch....

The entrance to the Meet-n-Greet. I loved the sign that Tiffany designed for it - it was very "Texas" and said "Howdy" to welcome our guests from all over the country. I even got to sit with some Minnesota folks at the Networking Lunch - from Eagle Brook Church. Fun!

Here are a bunch of the development guys, serving as the 'welcoming committee' to one of the keynote sessions.....

And here's that IT room, all set up as their Command Central! Techies galore!

And here's our main keynote speaker - Ron Hall. He is the author of "Same Kind of Different As Me" - a NY Times Bestselling book about a wealthy art dealer befriending a homeless man and the amazing friendship that ensued.

But the true highlight of the conference for me was our very own FT band! We have some musically talented employees and some of them formed a band to play at the conference to kick off the second day.

They were fantastic and everyone had a good time singing along. They did a set of 4 songs to kick off Day 2 and it really got everyone in a great mood to start the day.

Here's Mayce on vocals, Joey on guitar and vocals and Chad on guitar.

Mayce was great - I had only heard her sing karoake, so this was the first 'real' performance I had seen her at and she did a fabulous job!

It was fun to see the band play - and realize that you interact with them on a regular basis in the office, but that they have this amazing talent outside of work.

The conference was a big success and a lot of work went into it. Hurray!