I have carefully avoided all travel since the COVID crisis began, for a variety of reasons. For one, most conferences were held virtually. Secondly I was not comfortable traveling in a closed space like an airplane, wearing masks for hours with no guarantee that this by itself protected me enough.

When the call for proposals came in for Workday DevCon 2022, I could not resist the temptation to submit a proposal on the Advising application I had developed using Workday Extend, which has served us really well. To be honest, I was not aware that if accepted, I needed to present the talk in person. Even after I knew this, I somehow thought I could convince the organizers to make an exception. None of this worked out…

So, I consulted my doctor after receiving my second booster. He said since I have been testing weekly at the College and all tests have been negative and that I have received two boosters, it is OK to trael, as long as I wear my mask in the airports as well as on the flight as much as possible. And I took the plunge.

I flew Jetblue, my favorite airline. The Wifi was free and was very reliable and there was electrical power under every seat! The only issue is that the snacks they give us has shrunk in size compared to pre-pandemic times. Might as well not give anything to us!

The conference was held in Haynes Mansion in San Jose, a very nice, secluded place, ideally suited for a small gathering. Having seen the sheer number of people at Workday Rising, I was not sure how many will attend this meeting and I was pleasantly surprised by the relatively small number (200 or so) attendees. I love such small gatherings because it is much easier to network and learn from others.

I arrived and realized that I had completely forgotten that I had to present a negative COVID test before entering the conference hotel! So, I had to do a rapid PCR test right there, which takes 30 minutes to provide the result. It was negative, but while waiting for the result I met a few people and said Hi and shamelessly reminded them not to forget to come to my session the. next day.

The next morning began with some product announcements and giving awards to some creative programmers – “Rising Star” award etc. During my talk I said that for those of us at the tail end of our career, doing this kind of leading edge stuff, they should establish a “Dying Star” award! Then came my presentation. Predictably, I had forgotten my early morning appointment for a tech check!

I got a quick lesson on what to do – with Workday presentations, everything is very carefully planned and executed. Anyways, my presentation was very well attended despite a parallel session and it was live streamed. I walkked through the rationale for choosing Workday Extend – it is low code, it looks andacts like everything else in Workday – and then jumped right into my demo.

In the demo I touched on the student experience for declaring majors, developing an academic plan, looking at Academic Progress Report (Degree Audit) the “Wellesley way”. I also touched on how an advisor interacts with the system and finally how the department and program chairs benefit from a consolidated view of all of their majors and minors. I thought it was well received and there were good number of questions afterwards.

I attended a few tech heavy presentations and learned quite a bit of tips and techniques. Went to their room full of Workday Extend Talent to ask a few questions. I did stump them on one question and waiting for a solution. Met a good number of people.

One memorable meeting was with a young woman who used to be a Workday Student developer. I had asked to meet with Workday Student developers during an earlier visit to Workday to thank them for the work they have done for Workday Student product and she was in the audience. She reminded me of that andtold me that she has now moved on to Extend, so we talked about various things.

Then, just like that, it was time to return. I chose not to participate in the Hackathon, which wouuld have been fun and I was sure to rob someone else of a win! I said “let it go” and came home. Only to get ready to fly to my second conference the following week.