Faxlandez Family Blog

Last week, I spent time in Denver with around 400 other Automatticians, mostly from our Happiness division – support for WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, Tumblr, and many more awesome services.

On Saturday, after some nice time with the family, I flew out in the afternoon and arrived 4 hours later (but sort of minus 2 hours due to the time difference). This was the first time I’d taken a direct flight from Richmond to anywhere!

I caught up with a few friends once we all arrived, then had a chill evening in my room after dinner.

The next morning I hung out with my some of my teammates during an AMA hosted by our CEO and others. Shortly after that, we had a guest speaker and one exercise involved staring at a coworker directly in the eyes for a few minutes. I paired up with an Automattician I’d never met before, and oof that was awkward but we made it through and had a fun-ish time after all.

Tuesday and Wednesday were booked solid with workshops, AMAs, meals, and ticket crushing (responding to customers via email). I managed to make a run to Target/CVS (yay, antibiotics finally!), eat some delicious food, and snag a photo with my old team – Athens!

On Wednesday and Thursday night there were various events such as Jam Sessions, Karaoke Night, Retro Game Night, and my favorite – Board Games Night! I had a great time playing Magic Maze, Azul, and Codenames: Pictures (the latter two I brought with me).

On Thursday, some of us spent a few hours at Meow Wolf Denver (Convergence Station) and I don’t think I could explain how strange of a place this was.

The fun wasn’t over after that! On Thursday evening we took over Lucky Strike in Downtown Denver (right near our hotel) for our closing party. I bowled two games and although I did not win either, I felt pretty good that I came out of there with a few spares and one or two strikes. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos that I can share.

After getting back from Lucky Strike, I hung out with others in the hotel lobby chatting away until about 2 in the morning. That’s not really “late” for me, most nights I’m up until 1 at least, but on Friday morning I had a pretty early wake-up call for a 9:45am flight home.

My direct flight home ended up having to circle for a bit because we could not land during tornado warnings. After a nauseating half hour, the plane landed and shortly after that I was back home with my family.

By that evening, we were enjoying dinner on the Chuy’s patio, catching up from our week apart, and sharing souvenirs.

For now, I have no more big trips planned for the rest of the year. It’s been a busy few months so I’m ready to settle in for the holidays!