Symposium Stresses and Airport Antics

The interview process at the Symposium was quite a unique experience. Let's just say it's the closest thing to speed-dating that one could experience except without the possibility of dinner and a movie.
ITMI's version of connecting tour directors with tour companies is called Marketplace. There were about 40 tour operators arranged in market-style in a big conference room at the hotel. The process began with "Open Marketplace" which lasted for 25 minutes. When the announcement was made that the marketplace was open, we had the opportunity to deliver our resume and introduce ourselves to as many companies as we could, we were allowed to spend no more than 30 seconds with any one company's representative. I managed to talk with about 5 companies.
After "Open Marketplace" was the time to have more extensive interviews with companies we had chosen...by more extensive I mean 8-minute interviews! When the interview number was announced we had to go into the room, find the company we were scheduled with, talk to the representative for 6 minutes, hear a 2 minute warning bell and complete the interview in a total of 8 minutes! This is where I hope I made a good enough impression with someone for them to remember me among the 250 other interviewees and decide to hire me instead of them! WOW!
The Symposium provided many opportunities for networking, socializing, learning and discussing relevant topics. There were several meals included and a closing night bar-b-q at a ranch nearby. All-in-all a great experience....hope it works!
On the last day we took a tour of Austin, Texas after which we were deposited at the airport.
None of this was more stressful than traveling home from Austin. For scheduling reasons I will not go into here I was scheduled to fly from Austin to Orlando on jetBlue and from Orlando to Islip on Southwest. This normally wouldn't be a problem but for the fact that there was only a little over an hour between landing in Orlando on jetBlue and taking off on Southwest. This necessitated me to get off the plane, go down the hallway, get on the shuttle, go to the terminal, walk thru about 3 hallways, down the escalator, wait at the luggage carousel, claim my 59 lb bag, load on top of it my 12 lb bag, my laptop case and my camera, go thru the terminal, up the elevator, thru more of the terminal, check my 59 lb bag at Southwest, go thru security, take off my shoes, take my laptop out of the bag, collect my stuff, go thru the terminal onto the shuttle, thru the terminal, go to the ladies room, find the gate and board my plane...I did this all in 45 minutes and had 15 minutes to spare! The other option was to sleep in the airport and take an early flight the next morning. Holy Crap!