Conference-style coffee cake

Conferences are invigorating, right?

Try sitting through a dozen of these in a dark room and you may change your mind.



Of course you can’t beat the free coffee and break snacks between sessions. The company isn’t usually that bad either, although I do often find myself saying the same thing over and over (and over).

The most maddening aspect of conferences isn’t the boredom – although who can’t relate to that tricky dilemma of being caught in the front row of a tedious talk that never quite lived up to its title (shame on the presenter!) – but rather my inability to attend every overlapping talk in the conflicting time schedules of the “too many to count” concurrent sessions, simultaneously happening all at once.

Naples Grand Beach Resort, right next to Clam Pass

Then there’s my inability to find the “Venetian” Room – “Oh, that one’s upstairs on the other side of the Grand Pavillion, you know, right across from the Poinciana Room”– and most devastating of all: to pull the nozzle on the shiny silver seraph only to discover its coffee has run dry.

That’s when I grab an extra piece of cake as consolation.