Optometry's Meeting 2010 in Orlando, Florida

Earlier this spring my partner, Murray Pratt, and I entered into a business plan competition sponsored by Wal-Mart to design the "optometric practice of the future." We spent many hours brain storming and putting together our project. In March we competed against other teams from our school. The winning team received $1000 and got a trip to Optometry's Meeting, the national convention for the American Optometric Association, in Orlando, FL. Well, we won at the school level and we able to make the trip. We flew down to Orlando on Wednesday, checked into our hotel room and then spent the evening preparing for our presentation. We were the first group to present Thursday.

Here we are right before our presentation. We were glad to go first and get it done with.

The convention was being held at the Gaylord Palms Resort, and we were lucky enough to stay there for free.

Here is inside the hotel with a view of the giant atrium.

They had alligators in the atrium and I told Lucy about them, every time I talked to her after that she asked me about them so I made sure to get a few pictures.

We spent the rest of Thursday attending meetings and classes with the many other students from all the optometry schools in the country and even a few from Canada. Thursday night was the famous "student bowl" where someone from each school competes in a buzz-in-your-answer type thing. The room was crazy with nothing but students cheering for their schools while standing on their chairs and wearing school t-shirts and other costumes. It was fun to be at but perhaps a little too much for us boring married guys. We felt like we were at a high school pep rally or something.

Right after the Student Bowl was the reception to announce the winner of our business plan competition. We really wanted to win because the winning team was awarded a whopping $20,000 scholarship.

At the reception we were all pretty nervous and anxious so to lighten the mood they had a few entertainers come, including none other than Simon, Paula, and Randy. (Impersonators of course)

Well, we didn't end up winning, which of course brought some disappointment, but we felt we gave it a good shot and learned a lot in the process. Here we are with the teams from the other schools.

We spent the next two days going to classes and visiting every booth in the huge exhibit hall. I learned a lot about a bunch of companies and products and it all got me very excited to get started in my career. We also were able to walk around the Citywalk at Universal Studios.

Between the classes and such we played some mini-golf on what to me looked like the nicest mini-golf course I'd ever seen. The hardest part was at most holes were some sand traps that were deep enough to be called trenches. Murray got the best of me and was crowned champion.

All in all, it was an amazing trip and experience. I learned a lot and got to go to Florida for the first time. It was hard being away from the family, I really missed them and I think they missed me too. I really owe Heather big time for being a "single parent," I know it wasn't easy and not really fair that I got to get away and have so much fun. Next time, we're all going!