The Ken Puls Blog

Okay, finally I’m going to put up some pictures here. I’ll break them up a bit so that the load time isn’t too long. First off, merely for my interest, here’s the view from the hotel room:

Now, of more interest…

Dee and I did start the day off with breakfast at Lowell’s, after which we headed to the WTCC so that I could register. My first impression was that this year MS had scaled way back. In past years you went up the main escalators to the top floor and all the registration was right there. This year I did that (missed a sign somewhere) and had to go through the back hallways to find the registration desk. Felt like we were tucked away in a closet. It turns out that I missed the escalators that go to the right place although it still felt a bit like it was in the back room.

Dee and I went shopping for a while, then I spent a while chasing around the WTCC looking for Roger Govier whom, based on the Twitter posts, I kept missing by a few minutes. I returned to the WTCC for the keynotes and met up with some folks though, and here’s some pictures.

Bob Umlas at the welcome reception. Bob, incidentally, did not take a vow of silence.

Unfortunately, Dee fell earlier in the day, so was feeling a little too sore to make it out to the Rock Bottom. I headed out and had a few beers with the crew below. From left to right: Tom Urtis, Roger Govier, Greg Truby (you can only see his head here,) Tushar Mehta, Bill Manville, Bill Jelen, Richard Schollar (looking the other way,) Mike Rosenblum and Nate Oliver.

From the other end of the table, again from left: Bill Jelen, Richard Schollar, Mike Rosenblum, Nate Oliver, Kevin Jones, Tom Urtis, Roger Govier and Greg Truby.

And another shot that has a couple of others in it as well. From left to right, front row: Zack “No really! I was at last year’s summit even though no one saw me” Barresse, Greg Truby, Tom Urtis, Curt Frye. Second row: Bill Jelen, Mike Rosenblum, Roger Govier, Richard Schollar and myself. Back row is Nate Oliver and Smitty Smith.

Eventually we got kicked out of the Rock Bottom, as it closed, so we started to head back to the Westin. On the way back to the hotel we somehow lost almost the entire group! Curt and I closed down the Westin bar, with the rest of the group showing up after a while. (Apparently they stepped into the Elephant & Castle on the way.) I think I rolled into my hotel room at about 2:15AM, setting the alarm for 6:15…

I promise… they’re coming.  I’ve eaten up the last couple of evenings working on something important, but hope to post pics within the next couple of days.

One a cool note, we finally got our new CRM software working yesterday at work.  It’s a product called Lasso, and is a web based system to track customer interests, contact information and even real estate closings.
We’ve had the system for a couple of years now, but haven’t really done much with it beyond hand post contact information into it.  We sent out our first emails yesterday to people who attended a trade show, and it worked like a charm.  Our hope is that we’ll be able to use it to drive business our way, and we could sure use the help.  (Everyone could in this economy, couldn’t they?)

There’s still work to be done, such as linking the database to our website.  We’d like people to be able to sign up online without having to go through a human to do so.  In addition, we’d like them to be able to manage their own profile, logging in to update contact info and preferences, such as what types of things they’d like to hear from us about.  Our eventual goal is to use this to markte to people based on the things they’d like to hear about.  (Golf lessons, tournaments, weddings, lunch specials, real estate offerings, etc…)

We’ll see how it all goes, but it’s been a really big win for us.

Every year when we come to the Summit, we always request a fridge for the room, so Dee can buy some fresh fruit from Pike Place Market. Normally we get a standard mini-fridge, but this year they were all out of those apparently… They did have a mini-fridge though. Just to put it in size perspective, I put my RibbonX book next to it:

Now granted, it’s a big book, but not that big!