Hartford, the state capital of Connecticut was the other city I did from my stay in New Jersey. It was a couple of hours drive up the highway on a cold but sunny spring day. We made the mistake of skipping breakfast before we left New Jersey thinking we’d easily sport somewhere to stop off on the highway but while we passed plenty of places before we started looking as soon as we did start looking there were none to be seen. Eventually we just took a turn off and ended up eating in some burger place.
Hartford, the state capital of Connecticut was the other city I did from my stay in New Jersey. It was a couple of hours drive up the highway on a cold but sunny spring day. We made the mistake of skipping breakfast before we left New Jersey thinking we’d easily sport somewhere to stop off on the highway but while we passed plenty of places before we started looking as soon as we did start looking there were none to be seen. Eventually we just took a turn off and ended up eating in some burger place.
We got to East Hartford ahead of time to find the public library where the talk was to be held was not yet open. So we killed time by wandering around the rather bleak mainstreet and having a rather bad coffee before the organisers turned up and we could get in. The meeting turned out to be in a large basement room in the library, a little bit too big in fact for the crowd of 14 who turned up. This was the first time I’d spoken in a public library (complete with a US flag in the corner) which was a little odd, a feeling not helped by the combination of the carpet and my footwear resulted in me getting a static shock every time I touched the computer to change slides. After some experimentation (and more shocks) we fixed this by putting a folded up table between me and the carpet which must have looked a little odd.
We went back to Deric’s afterwards for some more discussion and food,. On the way back I’d a long conversation in the car with Skip about recruitment and the difficulties that surround it as NEFAC seemed to be even worst at asking people to join then the WSM was. I discuss some of those issues in the blog Recruitment fear and loathing in Dublin written maybe a year after this meeting.
more accounts of the North American speaking tour
WORDS: Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )