My out-of-office learning has just continued to grow as, this morning, I took a ride on a true Viennese riverboat to finish up Day 2 of the conference with a tour of the Vienna Danube Canal. It was extremely interesting (much more so than yesterday) and the lunch was much appreciated.
I love taking part in events; not just for the free food and trinkets that come with most of them (although those are a super plus), but because of the well organized, informative presentations and the fact that the other people in the audience are there because they, too, are genuinely interested in the topics as I am. Even at Grand Valley, I attended as many on-campus events as I could typically fit into my schedule, but as I was sitting in the WKO (Wirtschaftskammer Oesterreich) building, surrounded by men in suits on their Blackberries, and women with briefcases and tight hair buns, it occurred to me how significant this particular event was, and how the events I will be attending in the next few months will be different from those at Grand Valley; I am in Vienna, one of the biggest social hubs in Europe, one of the most culture- and history-rich cities in the world, and I am a 20-year old intern from No-Name, Michigan who is attending a conference hosted by the European Commission on a project that could quite possibly make an enormous change to the world for the better, and I’m sitting side-by-side with ubersuccessful inventors, innovators, and businessmen, or people who could become such one day, thanks to this conference.
Upon realizing all of this, I pretty much had 5 straight minutes of thinking to myself “Oh, my gosh. This is too cool.”
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