Five Things I Learned At My First Out-Of-Town Work Conference:

1. The following people will be at the conference without a doubt: dude that wears running shorts the whole time, free-swag hogs, married gentleman that is going to use this conference as a much-needed break from the wife, aggressive networkers, annoying office workers, and tons of people that take this shit way too seriously. Get yourself a partner-in-crime very, very early on. Mine was named Kira, and without her, I would have crumpled and died on the first day. 

2. You will either have, or be on the receiving end of, a conference crush. Due to the fact that I am in the greatest relationship of all-time, and hated pretty much everyone there, I was of the latter variety. I spent most of the conference refusing to give this dude my e-mail, or explaining for the fiftieth time why I couldn't go to his room for "just one drink".

3. Be incredibly keen on about two of the presentations, take a ton of notes, and make sure everyone sees your face, and you're pretty much home-free for the rest of the time. This means long breaks in the hotel pool, pretending to be fancy ladies at the hotel bar, wandering the hotel shops, and wearing fluffy hotel robes everywhere.

4. When you get busted taking full bottles of wine back to your room from the open bar, make sure you are especially vocal to the hotel staff about the true meaning of open bars.

5. The only way to make it enjoyable is to skip most of your seminars, get drunk every chance you get on free conference cocktails, and basically become the conference wild-child, but be aware, when you return to work on Monday, you are going to look like the work asshole for about a week.
 
~sarah p.