So the conference began. Lots of time in meetings, brainstorms, and hanging around with the people I love so well. One of the things I love most about my job is the collaboration on new projects. When a new idea emerges for a project, a process, or if the product team just wants to get ideas for ways to improve the website, we all sit down together and brainstorm. I'd never experienced this level of professional co-creation until working for CouchSurfing.

We walked through the hills of Umbria in our free time, exploring, picking flowers, finding the best views. Spent many hours in the van, shuttling back and forth to better internet connection in Spoleto. Then there was the outing to Perugia. A few of us decided to leave the castle for an evening, go out to dinner and maybe find a dance club. What we found was a big town situated on a hill with a huge town square smack in the middle. All the college kids from the local university hang out in the square, playing music, socializing. We had an incredible meal in an out-of-the-way restaurant, involving more than one dish with fresh black truffle. Is there anything better than fresh pasta with truffles? We didn't find the dance clubs, and gave up the search in lieu of some Prosecco and chocolate at a cozy little wine bar. During the hour-long ride back we realized that it was March 30th, and that we were in a perfect position to inflict a well-planned April Fool's Day prank on our unsuspecting coworker family. Rejected ideas from the ensuing brainstorm: running through the castle upon our 2am arrival rousing everyone with some pretend emergency requiring the immediate evacuation of the premises; hiding all of the vehicles around the other side of the town; panty raid; and numerous others deemed too cruel or time consuming. What we did choose to perpetrate took us into the 3am hour. The milk and juice containers in our refrigerator were all opaque, so as to conceal the true nature of the contents thereof. We drained said containers into bowls, washed them and filled each with the other. Then we set our alarms to wake before the crew came down for breakfast. It was only a few key people who got juice on their cereal, and in their coffee, but it was totally worth it! It made for an amusing morning.

There were a few days of driving up and up and up and finding the little towns perched on the mountainsides, eating in little restaurants run by families, discovering vistas. One particular: a group of us had been driving around all day, visited some nearby municipal hot springs that were less than thrilling, and really just going as far as we could go and, ostensibly, still make it back in time for dinner. We drove up through unbelievably remote and tiny villages on the way to the sunset. Little nuns peeking out of windows to see who's roaring up the road, townspeople sitting on benches wave, cats and chickens scampering off the road at our approach. Casey had in mind that we'd have a sunset mountaintop dance party, and it turned out to be one of the pinnacle moments in Italy. It was 6 of us, a bottle of wine, the sound system in the car, and the will to live up the moment. The sunset was epic, and dance we did.

There were so many more amazing moments like this, I'll have to write a book to do them all justice. Some other conference highlights: playing sardines in the castle (see photo - a good many of us packed in the kitchen cellar), the sauna, multi-projector light show put to music watched from the floor of our gigantic living room, Erin (our chef's) dinners, and some really spectacular dinners out in the surrounding medieval towns.

Back in Rome

A small group of us returned to Rome and converged for a dinner party at my host’s house, which then turned into a night of showing everyone new to Rome around the city. We took a late night walk through the old city starting with the Colosseum. It was so fun to watch Fabiana experiencing Rome for the first time. We took everyone to Trevi fountain and there was a negotiation with the street sellers for some cheap plastic toys that ended up all over Otto's face (see photo). One more day of work with the crew at a hotel and then I was off to jolly old England.