Trip Advisor conference

23.01.2008

The hotel where the conference was at was very easy to find. I just took the number 1 bus up Mass. Ave. across the bridge. There was a stunning view of the Boston skyline on my way to breakfast.

I got there way earlier than everyone else, so I had a nice quiet breakfast. Then everyone just piled into the meeting room. We all listened to a bunch of presentations from the CEO of Trip Advisor, as well as one from my boss, Luc and also, the managers of smartertravel.com and cruisecritic.com.

Interesting. The company has experienced some stunning growth in the past year, and of course, they are interested in continuing this trend.

After that was done, we broke up into groups. I had a group of mostly younger people, which was interesting. Most of them had just come to work at Trip Advisor in the past year. We ate some noodles and then everyone left so quickly! I wanted to hang out a bit, but I guess they were all busy.

The one person I am supposed to meet to talk about important things is Alinna, and I can't seem to find her. I met her in the morning and we didn't really know what to say to each other, since we kind of had this discussion on the phone already. I sort of interviewed her and learned a bit about what she does over on the Trip Advisor forums. I guess I'll talk to her on the phone later.

Ok so after the conference Shaun and I went out to meet with Kevin and Josh, two of our bloggers in Boston. They were pretty cool guys. They talked about their travels, Kevin went to Denmark for an exchange program, and Josh has traveled all over India on his motorcycle. He's currently living the rockstar lifestyle in Boston, and planning to go back to India soon. I was disappointed when Jessica, another blogger did not show up, even though she was really excited to meet everyone. I wonder what happened to her...

After that, Shaun went back to his place, and I had some time to kill so I walked randomly around Boston a bit and found myself in front of a gigantic Christian Science church. Incidentally, they were having a "healing meeting" at that moment, so I decided to go in to see what it's all about. Mostly, it's just people giving their testimony about reading certain religious texts and finding themselves healed of cancer, colds, etc. etc. Kinda wacko... What I liked about it though, was this thread that runs through the whole philosophy about reality. They believe that reality is something our minds create, including our bodies. It's very existential, which is one of the many philosophies I subscribe to, halfheartedly at that.

Then, it was time to catch up with some Bostonian couchsurfers that I had met at a previous meetup in Montreal. Tony and Eli were both there, but I kinda got a little drunk and completely forgot to take pictures. It was awesome meeting such an active group, they meet weekly at The Other Side Cafe, every Wednesday night. Pretty awesome. I also had heard that they were planning another road trip to Quebec City for Carnaval, coincidentally, the same weekend that I will be there. I told them about this and it seemed to further encourage the roadtrip deal. I hope that they will come and hopefully I will meet up with them again for another psycho-insane blow out!

The Boston crew is totally awesome. I was talking with Mike, who had just moved to Boston from France and he mentioned he wanted to go touristing around. I had the morning free, so I promised to meet him the next morning bright and early at 9 a.m.

I also met Laura, who was at the meeting for the first time, and another guy from France. I ordered a pitcher of "Harpoon" beer, apparently it's the local special (cheap and comes with chips and salsa), shared it with some people and then was kindly driven home by another friendly couple, both of their names escape me at the moment.

Sunrise over the Charles River