One of those amazing weeks

We had our company retreat in New Orleans this week, and it was incredible. Mon and Tues, I worked remote for Cleveland, and flew to NO in the afternoon... and we had our first great dinner together - the 9 principals of the company. The hotel was a funky french quarter place - not very luxurious, but functional. My room faced Decateur so I had a fair amount of traffic noise coming in the window, plus some late afternoon jazz wafting in ruining my naps.

Wednesday was an all day retreat for the Principals, where we went over all sorts of operational and strategic STUFF. In the evening, the rest of the company showed up (26 more consultants!), and we had a fine dinner at Mr B's - we had a private room that we filled with laughter and increasingly loud conversations. At the end, half of the crowd went out the door to the left (back to the hotel) and half went to the right... toward Bourbon Street.

Oh, Bourbon Street, you scalawag. It is drunk disneyland, and just depressing, but if you get a few into you, it becomes sort of fun. We finished the night at Pat O'Brien's dueling piano room, and a hurricane was purchased and no surprises a headache followed on Thursday AM. Not TOO bad, but boy, those sweet drinks are just a bad idea. BAD BAD BAD idea.

Thursday we started the formal "retreat" for all of the associates - going over the company goals and getting into some educational sessions. We had a great keynote speaker - the CIO of the Cayman Islands Health System. The guy is a visionary who has been in a lot of leading practice places (including building one of the first successful healthcare data warehouses), and he shared his time generously.

Thursday night was another dinner out at Maximo's Italian Grill on Decateur (1 block from our hotel). We were hanging out on the gallery overlooking the street, and had a nice long dinner... but I needed to duck out early, because I had a very important visitor... GOOGY!!!

Pamela flew in Thursday evening, and so I raced to the hotel to see her. It was nice to have her here.

Friday AM, we woke up early and schlepped our stuff down the street (ok, 10 blocks) to the JW Marriott, stopping briefly for some chicory coffee and beignets at Cafe du Monde. The JW was accommodating, letting us check in at 8am (!!!) and upgrading our room... which I was paying for with points anyway - FREE ROOM! Then I was back to the meeting, while Pamela had a nap, then some spa appointments, then some antiquing.

The session on Friday was again wonderful: We had a panel of 3 CIOs for whom we do work come and talk about their challenges and how people like us are ideally helpful. It was one hour of structured Q&A, and then they hung out for another hour for chatting - and that was just amazing access for us to have. BTW - Not by plan, but they were Cerner and Siemens site CIOs, not Epic...

Friday night the consultants were on their own, and leadership went to dinner at Bayona... but and afterwards went to a formal hotel ballroom on Bourbon Street where some very average Jazz was being served up... we were sort of checking our watches, but the owner of our company seemed happy there, so we were willing to give a little time... and then things took an unexpected turn: The show turned into a burlesque - dancers on boxes throughout the room, with the band playing blues stomps while the ladies slowly did striptease... the end result was a g-string and pasties, so it was strictly PG13, but it was just funny, because the ladies were totally hamming it up and bringing a lot of character. It was a situation where we were all at first confused, then annoyed (we don't as a rule like going to strip clubs) and then amused.

Saturday was another day, but I need to post later - it's time for breakfast.