The end of May was VERY action packed for my little family and me! My 6 year old was finishing his school year and, at the same time, I was sent to Las Vegas for a 5 day global work conference. My ex was out of town for a business trip that week too, so there were a lot of details to handle to make sure my boys had the care and everything they needed while I was away. I succeeded in getting my boys packed up and settled with a dear friend and her family and got my dog delivered to his favorite doggie lodge. It was time to go to VEGAS!

I work for Rimini Street, Inc. I’ve been with the company for 7 years. They hired me when I was 4 months pregnant with my first son, 1 week after I had been down-sized from my previous employer. The change was very good for me. We are mostly a mobile workforce, working from home. This has been a blessing for me allowing me to be much more present and available in my boys’ lives. I have my laptop in the middle of the house and have been able to be a part of their world and be there for them.

Rimini was a much smaller company 7 years ago. I think there were maybe 200 employees when I started. Now we’re over 1,000 employees and have opened offices worldwide in India, Australia, UK, Brazil, Japan, Israel and more…those are just the countries I can remember off the top of my head. We also went public in October 2017, Nasdaq: RMNI. This global conference was a 5 day extravaganza to bring everyone together to share the company vision and direction as we move forward and grow into a real life global company.

I arrived in Vegas on Sunday, 5/20. Rimini kicked off our event Sunday night with a welcome reception, complete with open bar, heavy hors d’oeuvres, buffet dinner, live band, DJ and dancing. The days that followed were incredibly busy with presentations and break out sessions to load us with information. They wined and dined us, and they had open bar “networking” parties from 10pm – 2am every night. They finished our conference sessions early on Tuesday and Wednesday to allow us to enjoy a variety of optional fun events, personal free time or charitable volunteering opportunities.

Some of my coworkers and me touching $1 Million at Binion’s:

I was excited for the chance to see my co-workers because we communicate primarily via Skype chat, GoToMeeting and phone. So, I chose to participate in the same activities as them. We opted for the Pool Party option on Tuesday, which was just a chance to lounge at one of the hotel’s private pools…with open bar and snacks. We started talking about what we wanted to do afterwards and a few of us decided we would go to Fremont Street to ride the Slotzilla Zoom Line across the Old Strip.

One of my coworkers joining the Zoom Line fun is in a wheelchair and the Slotzilla Zoom Line people require that someone take the wheelchair to the finish end. I was that someone… I’ve never piloted an electric wheelchair, and certainly not through Vegas Fremont Street crowds of people. Those chairs are so fast and people don’t have much of a tendency to look anywhere but straight ahead. 🙂 I almost took a few inattentive people out and had to do some evasive maneuvers to avoid it.

Anyhoo…I got the chair safely delivered to its destination and raced back 5 blocks to the start end of the line in an attempt to have the chance to fly with my coworkers. I missed them, but had a really fun flight on my own. We all regrouped at the finish and headed back to our hotel, joining some of our other colleagues at Nobu for sushi. It was pretty fantastic. I attempted to follow sushi up with one of the 10-2 “Networking” parties, but I just wasn’t in the mood for a party kind of situation, so I called it a night.

For Wednesday night, a few of us took advantage of the chance to see Mystere by Cirque du Soleil. It was an interesting show. It was a lot to take in. I felt like the show was annoying at times, but then it was breathtaking and amazing too. All of the performers were so incredibly talented.

Thursday was the final day, which was full of conference stuff and then a formal awards dinner and after parties scheduled to last until 6am the following morning. It was quite the marathon, but I survived and was happy to be back home by noon on Friday.

Me being a dork with my coworkers from India at the Thursday night party photo booth:

Throughout most of the conference I just didn’t feel like I was in party spirits. I was conflicted. I felt grateful to work for a company that put so much effort into putting together such a huge event, not only trying to communicate with us, but also putting together events and activities to spoil/pamper us. At the same time, I had never been separated from my boys for that long and I just wanted to be home. I also just never really feel Vegas. When I’m there, I just want to be…not there. I wanted to do Date #10 on this trip, but was so busy and worn out with all of the conference stuff.

Overall, I’m happy I went. It was great to spend time with my coworkers and I met some new people from other departments with whom I interact, but have never met in person. It was a pretty interesting and emotional experience to listen to the executives goals and vision for the future of our company. It was emotional because I kept thinking about how remarkably much things have changed in the 7 years that I’ve been with Rimini.

Change is a crazy thing. We go through these little incremental changes on a daily basis in our lives and our jobs. Sometimes these changes aren’t so noticeable, other times they’re irritating, inconvenient or painful. We keep making these changes and these little adjustments and transitions. When we look back a year…or 7, where we are at the end of that time looks dramatically different from how it looked when we started. It’s pretty crazy. Rimini Street is a totally different animal from what it was when I started there, and I was pretty excited and proud to see where all of the changes have taken us. My life is 100% different from what it was 7 years ago, even 2 years ago. I’m proud and excited about that too.

Date #10 is done and will be posted soon!