September 2010

As most of you know by now, Stephanie and I are currently enjoying the wonderful city of Boston. We are here on an all expenses paid basis thanks to the very generous sponsorship of DivineOffice.org.

We flew out of Cincinnati early Friday morning and flew into the Washington Dulles Airport, where we had a very short layover. It was just long enough to get from one terminal to the next. However, Stephanie did manage to catch some streaming content from Netflix on her iPhone while we were in line to board the plane as you an see in the following photo.

After catching our connecting flight, we arrived in Boston Logan Airport around 2pm. We traveled extremely light, so we didn’t have to wait for any checked bags. We simply hopped on to an airport shuttle bus to get to the subway station.

One of my favorite things about both New York City and Boston are their subway systems. I don’t know what it is that fascinates me so much. I guess that it doesn’t matter how large these cities are, you can pretty much get anywhere you want to go without the need to take a cab or drive a car.

We took the Blue Line to Government Center. We hadn’t had had lunch yet, so we decided to surface from the subway system to see if we could find a place to eat. We pretty much ended up eating at the closest place we could find, which was the Kinsale Irish Pub. We ordered and shared the Fish & Chips there. It wasn’t that good! If you ever eat at this place, I’d certainly suggest something else from the menu.

Next, we took the Red Line to Cambridge, which is where we are staying. More about where we are staying at this end of the post, where I have a cool night photo of our hotel

After dropping our bags off at the hotel, sitting back and relaxing for a bit, we met up with our great friend, Erik Fisher. Erik is also my co-host for our Social Media Serenity Podcast.

We took the Red Line to Park Street and walked through Boston Common and then through the Boston City Garden.

After enjoying the park, we decided that we had all worked up a good appetite and I had told them how much I enjoyed a place that I had eaten at when I was here with the CNMC. More about that in just a moment.

On our way toward the Boston Faneuil Hall Market area, we passed a store that had some unique art in the window. Check out the creative way they found to use old cassette tapes.

Okay, so this next photo is of a street sign. Rather than me explaining its significance. We decided that we wanted to quiz the community. We are wondering how long it will take, in the comments section of this post, to explain the significance of the road sign in the following photo.

Stephanie wore here flip flops and after approximately four miles of walking, they started to hurt the top part of her foot. Luckily, just as she had just spoken up about the pain she was experiencing, we passed a Payless Shoe Store where she was able to pick up a new pair of gym shoes. Good thing too, we’re doing a lot of walking here!

This next photo is probably one of the coolest buildings I’ve ever seen. Here’s a photo of what it looked like at night.

Here’s what this building looks like during in the daylight!

Have you ever seen the following depiction of the Boston Massacre by Paul Revere?

Here’s a photo of Erik in this exact spot….

And well, you guessed it, here’s a photo of Stephanie and I on the exact spot where the Boston Massacre took place.

On our way to the restaurant, I asked Stephanie if she had remembered to call our friend Karen. This is Stephanie on the phone talking with her.

So when I came here a few weeks back for the CNMC, we had dinner at the Kingfish Hall restaurant. It was so good that I decided that I had to take Stephanie there.

Located in the heart of Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall, Kingfish Hall is chef and restaurateur Todd English’s seafood dining concept. The extensive menu features New England classics as well as a handpicked daily selection of fresh, local, coldwater shellfish and sushi selections plus daily specials.

After dinner, we ran into a vender selling ball caps. This is something Stephanie likes to collect when we travel. Here’s the Boston hat she picked.

Next, we walked down to the Boston Harbor, which is absolutely beautiful at night. And at daytime too, for that matter. Here’s a statue of Christopher Columbus that we came across.

Next, we wondered the streets of Boston, looking for ice cream and I took this random photo of Boston at night.

After several hours of walking, we walked 6.6 miles total, we decided that it was time to call it a night. We headed back to our hotel in Cambridge. The Kendall Hotel is an AMAZING hotel and I strongly urge you to stay here if you ever visit Boston. It’s only one block away from the Kendal subsway station.

The bed was extremely comfortable and we had a great night sleep. We woke up bright and early on Saturday, September 25th and headed out to attend Day 1 of Podcamp. The following is a YouTube video I created as we were walking there.

The following photo was taken by our friend Stephen Cross, a long time member of the gspn.tv community. In front of us is a Microsoft Surface table. Every single person who saw it commented that it looked like a giant iPad. Though, I will point out that this device predates the iPad by a few years.

I gave my session at 3pm today. Though there was an issue where the session before me had rearranged the tables in such a way that would not have worked for my session. Nobody put the tables back to the original configuration.

This caused me to personally move every table and chair back into place as people where rushing into the room rather than getting my tech gear set up for my presentation. After finishing the room setup, it was time to start my session and I was now hot and my heart rate was quite elevated from all the hurried motion.

Add to this the fact that the room was very small and that it was packed so full that it was standing room only which made the room hot and stuffy, which is not good for mental clarity.

Then, I had an issue getting a YouTube video to pre-load for my presentation, which I should have just ignored and went on without worrying about it. However, for some reason, I had in my mind that it was so important to a point that I wanted to make that I let it remain on my mind through the whole presentation.

The video never did load and I am quite sure that this was the worst speaking session I’ve ever done. Now many people told me that they really enjoyed the session and I noticed that one of the folks in the room tweeted out several quotes from my session that made me feel as though, if you were listening, you should have been able to pull out those valuable points.

Here’s an example of some things that Morriss Partee tweeted….

These tweets really helped put my mind at ease. I suppose my session wasn’t a total failure. However, it was definitely not my finest hour!

After the first full day of sessions, we came back to the hotel to freshen up and then headed downtown for the official Podcamp Party. We did a little mingling and networking there. After the party, we came back to the hotel where I am now writing this post.

We are having a really great time. Stephanie and I are so blessed to get to experience this wonderful city together. The kids are doing great back at home. Stephanie is now fast asleep and I’m thinking about venturing out, into the night, to see if I can track down a Diet Coke.

If you have just a minute, would you please go to http://gspn.tv/divineoffice and leave a comment on that post thanking Dane and the folks a Divine Office for making this trip possible for us! I can’t tell you how much of a blessing it is to experience this event, together, with Stephanie!

Click Here For Part 2 of our Boston Trip Blogging!

{ 6 comments }