Core Consultant Seminar

I've spent all day at the W Hotel in SF downtown for a one-day Core Consultant Seminar. The W Hotel is very hip and modern, but I think it's a bit pretentious. In the States, an elevator is an elevator. Why the heck would you want to call it a lift when you know darn well that you're not in the UK?

The seminar was a complete waste of my time. I had envisioned this as a part networking, part propaganda kind of seminar, but it was nothing of the sort. To begin with, the instructor spent a full hour on a song-guessing game, where collaboration was not allowed. Then, there a video that mocks Accenture on every single slide. (And, in some cases, 5 videos per slide.) The instructor said he had come to SF for his team, but he went a little too far when all he could talk about was how difficult his project has been and how great his team is. For goodness' sake, there is more to the world than his little government project. And, it's not exactly motivating to keep putting the Accenture methodoloy down. For example, in the game of systems implementation jeopardy, he asked, "These should have been fixed in systems test, but they won't be in the system until a later date." And, lo and behold, the answer is "future release". Forgive me for being so critical, but I just don't think that's the kind of message you want to pass to your consultants.

All in all, I think that was the worst training I've ever been to. The only redeeming part of the day was the people development presentation, which was done by a different speaker. Obviously managing people is a lot easier said than done, but it's good to hear real life examples of what worked and what didn't work.

It was the good old fashion networking happy-hour after being bombarded with mix messages for 9 straight hours. As I have never been a big fan of randomly introducing myself to strangers, I decided to take off early and treat myself to a shopping spree. (After all, it was stressful to just sit there, wondering how much I could have gotten done if I was not sitting in that room.)

The new Bloomingdales and Westfield mall are amazing, but H&M remains my all-time favorite. Forever 21 is still cool, but its return policy just doesn't cut it. I don't know how they're still in business with a no-refund policy. At any rate, I spent about an hour and a half at H&M, and let's just say I was happy with how my day ended. :)