The big day and beyond

Given the night I had, I was really in no shape to handle anything that morning. Thankfully I had some good peeps looking out for me! 

In a shocking development we started over an hour late - apparently people were confused and didn't know what was going on - weird. I got a lovely phone call from the main hall saying the MC wanted to quit because he wasn't a "tech" person and didn't want to include our social media elements - it's a digital event people! Somehow my "team" convinced him to stay but he forgot his glasses so she had to help him read the screen (smacks forehead). It was just good times all around!

Once the show began though, people were happy and the crazy continued but at a lower rate than it had been.

I have to admit the screen did look pretty epic

The day ended with a dinner where the grand prize winners from the hackathon received their awards. I thought I had pictures of the dinner but apparently not! Though, I do have a pic with Dr. Chung's wife - she was a legend at the event!

The second day of the Ministerial was more of the same with a notable exception - it included a closed session for Ministers. This is the reason we have these things. 

Of course nothing was set up right, I had to negotiate with people where they were sitting as result yadda yadda yadda but the icing on the cake was when the SG asked if everyone had a particular document and, of course, they did not so this resulted in me sprinting to the office. Note this is the ONLY event that did not take place inside the conference centre which wouldn't have mattered until I had to return. . .it had started monsooning outside. Biblical proportions of rain were falling, people were taking shelter and this idiot (finger points to me) goes bolting out the door and gets completely soaked in the process - ah the memories!

And so the event ended - we took the stage, took a photo and celebrated!

 - no, wait there was one more thing. . .

The Friday was our regular Committee meeting which would take place in the same room as the Ministers' closed session (see above). My colleague decided to do some decorating with the gems in the photo.

I offered to go with him to drop off the giant Ms just to make sure everything was ready for the next day. . .

I lost it laughing. I was laughing so hard I was in tears because this pretty much summed it all up! In good news we found Latvia and Mexico - so two less things to print!

And Josie is back to work while everyone else is enjoying drinks in the lobby bar (aside from a few who got suckered into going to another event). Finally, I make it to drinks and the rest of the night was, as they say, n'importe quoi!

I provide only one photo of the night . . .