I seem to travel to the same cities over and over for work–San Francisco and Las Vegas. By my count this was the 10th time I have visited Las Vegas. I spent the past couple nights there where colleague Shenea and I took in the Oracle Modern Marketing Experience at the MGM. As Oracle customers at Callaway, I spend a large percentage of my time using their email tool, Responsys. We attended the conference to hear what other companies are doing, what new exciting advancements are being made, and listened to execs from big successful companies talk about marketing. But to you that’s not very interesting. The fun part of the trip is Oracle repaying us for being a customer for the past year and showing us a good time. And did they ever do just that!

The first night, after the conference stuff, our account rep took us and some other customers out to dinner at a fancy sushi restaurant, Shibuya. We then attended a private Bastille concert (they have that one song “Pompeii” that was very popular last year. Next, our account rep, two other Oracle managers, Shenea, Shenea’s sister who was along for the ride, another customer from Minneapolis and I all limo’d over to Caesar’s Palace to the high-end dance club Omnia where we got seated at a VIP area and were treated to bottle service. I’d never done anything like that before. I caught a glimpse of the menu and it was like $1,000 for a regular bottle of Grey Goose vodka in one of these areas. Our group of 7 people had multiple bottles of vodka and champagne. With the fog machines and lights and thumping bass in our faces it was just a crazy free-for-all. We were out til 3:45am before Shenea finally convinced everyone to leave or we may have been there til sun-up. I would say I am way too old for the dance club scene but I was the second youngest in the group. Overall, a pretty legendary night. (My phone had died long before arriving at the club, which may have been a blessing in disguise as I probably don’t need any reminders of the debauchery that unfolded. I undoubtedly would have called someone or taken some photos that would have gotten someone in trouble.)

Oh and then we had to wake up after like 3 hours of sleep and go to the conference again! We took in speeches and sessions and lunches and walked the sales floor during the day, and once the work part was over, it was more fun. As you maybe saw on Facebook, I had a brief meet-and-greet with famed model/actor Fabio. He was surprisingly nice and wanted to visit with me rather than just posing for a picture and moving on. I made up the part on Facebook about Fabio having visited Carpenter and hunting annually near Redfield, but then someone commented that she had seen him out and about, so I knew she was lying as well, so I kept the myth alive. Our account rep and his manager treated a group of customers to another nice multiple-course dinner, this time at Herringbone at the Aria. After a few glasses of wine and a filet mignon, I was tempted to be reasonable and call it a night…  but I thought better of giving my body a rest and went back out with the crew for a very similar experience at Hakkasan, a club at the MGM. It was the exact same experience, VIP area on an even louder dance floor with bottle service. It was crazy, but much less so than the previous night. If we had stayed a third night, which most companies did, I would have had one early/tame night.

On Thursday we took in the last of the conference and headed to the airport at 1. I got home at 8:30 and had a giant backlog of freelance work to do before going to bed. And then I finally got to see little Johnny when he woke up Friday morning.

So if anyone asks, yes I learned a lot and came back from the Oracle #MME16 very inspired.

And I may try to go all the way until the Seattle trip without drinking any more alcohol. My liver–and likely everyone else’s from that Vegas trip–is in need of a big detox.