My first day in Chicago has been fun... I went to McCormick Place early to register and was AWED by how gigantic this convention center is. On the ride from my hotel, the taxi driver (in a strong slavic accent) kept asking me which building I wanted to go to... I didn't understand what he meant until we arrived... WOW! IT'S HUGE (I can hear my 16-year old boy saying "that's what she said").
The taxi dropped me off at the main building and since the ASAE National Conference is expected to have about 7,000 attendees, I figured the main building was a safe bet. But I later found out that this convention center could easily hold over 200,000 attendees.
NOTE for Houstonians reading this: McCormick Place Convention Center has 3 buildings (North, West and South - I imagine they are working on an East building)... and each of those buildings is larger than the George R Brown Convention Center.
I registered and looked at the event schedule. The next session that pertained to me wasn't until 2:30 PM today - the first-time attendee orientation. So I went back to the hotel to get my bearings on the surrounding areas.
This was cool because I found out that 1 block from my hotel, the newest Batman movie (The Dark Knight) is being filmed. So I walked over with my camera and took a few shots, check out my Flickr photos to see them.
I've organized my schedule for the next few days to optimize the sessions I attend. Let's hope there's a lot of good information and I make great contacts at this event.
I used to attend a gigantor plastics conference every year at McCormick.
Companies would actually build entire plastic extruders and converters in the buildings (probably a few million dollars...) - first time I went, I just couldn't believe a conference center could hold them!!! HUGE!
Posted by: katie | August 13, 2007 at 01:55 PM