THANKS

Gonna quickly shout out to some specific people now that it's mostly over. All that's left is some sweeping up and that includes thanking some folks. So ...

First a big shout out to Tadson who does a ton of work behind the scenes. He's the one that understands the room contracts and books all the flights and rooms, works with all the vendors and communicates with the AV guys. He's the logistical guy and the logistics involved, especially when you have 400 people show up, are just HUGE.

And now one to the board, who was there if I had a need to bounce ideas and most importantly, were also huge behind the scenes people. Those fabulous goody bags? Your UCDA board put those together. They took care of speakers, they took each other to the emergency room, they worked the registration table, they ran little errands. We have a fabulous board. And I'd say that if I wasn't on the board too.

OK, down to the ones who you really might not know. RANDALL COLE will put on a whale of a conference for us next year and he was really Tadson's right hand man. He put together the dailies, ran errands, you name it. He got done whatever we'd ask. Heck, he even stood in front of all of you, which might be the thing he hated the most. PENNY FRANK rocks. If you volunteered, you know Penny. She was terrific in getting volunteers and then checking to see they were getting it done. MARLYS WEST put together the publication reviews, a tough task. Her house flooded the week before the conference, so she didn't come quite as prepared as she needed, but it worked out just fine. Great job. The UCDA FOUNDATION is always awesome with the auction. (BTW, thanks for the contributions!) The people that are the heart of UCDA Foundation are the heart and soul of UCDA. They are the core and the reason the rest of us are here.

CHERYL DESELLIER, DALE COCHRAN, WINSTON VAN DER HOOF and others, including board members, put up a beautiful awards show this year for us and you can't understand the amount of energy, blood, sweat and tears involved. If you didn't see much of them at the Saturday night party, well, they were there briefly before heading back to work on the show ... after working most of Saturday and Friday on it. I hope you had an opportunity to see it because it was wonderful.

OK it's sounding like an Oscar speech ... so I'll thank anyone I'm forgetting and you know who you are. Continue to share your photos. We love to see them and maybe we'll put them in print, even.

And now those that aren't UCDA members and that would be our speakers, who were just fantastic this year. I've said it before so I'll say it again ... one of my greatest pleasures was that not only did we have knowledgable, impressive people with amazing things to say, but they were all so pleasant. Genuinely nice interesting people. So a thanks to all of them for coming to our party. Our exhibitors this year were fabulous, whether they were able to come onsite or just do the goody bag. Support them, please. They believe in the college market.

And finally the hotel. There were bumps and bruises, but overall CATHY BAXTER and her team worked hard for us and I appreciate all they did. They had a great facility in which to host us.

OK! Gotta finish packing and showering but thought I'd get the thanks done while I was still warm and fuzzy.

Bye for now!