It’s not secret that San Diego California and the surrounding area is pretty much my favorite spot in the country. Luckily this year a work trip coincided with a Geek Girl Tech Con trip! Getting out to the “left coast” seems to only happen once a year now that I’m mostly-retired from professional speaking. This time around, I was able to see my Geek Girl family and bring along my husband. Total win-win.

To kick off our trip, Hubby and I flew to Los Angeles and then drove to Laguna Beach to exhibit at an industry conference. While we were there, we were able to sneak in a walk on the beach and a few nice meals on our own. The conference itself was great and gave us an amazing opportunity to meet potential new clients and catch up with existing ones. While our business is built around the software we created, it’s the relationships we make that really make a difference to us and our clients.

Since I had to leave a day early to head down to my conference while Dave finished working, I grabbed a train ride down the coast to San Diego. After the work conference finished up, Dave drove down to meet me and FINALLY got to meet so many of the Geek Girl women that I call friends. It meant so much for me to finally have him attend.

This year was the fourth San Diego-based Geek Girl Tech Con (and my fourth teaching there) and I think I’ve taught at four Boston / Cape Cod-based events. Every year I attend and teach I try to add more classes to my roster and this year, but this year I “only” taught five classes. My record is six!

We toy with the idea of leaving New Jersey and moving to Texas, but really I’d love to move to Southern California. The diverse food culture (hello breakfast bowls!!) makes me want to live there. In reality, staying put but traveling during the summer – with kids, dogs (when we finally get them!) and laptops – makes complete lifestyle sense to us. This year we got to California for a week, maybe next summer we can go for a month and bring the kids. Baby steps!!