Six of us went to a phenomenal conference by ASCD (CLICK HERE!!!) at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, TN. There were about 2900 attendees, and the hotel did not even seem full, except at lunch time when everyone was scrambling for a meal.
It’s like a cruise ship that’s 10 times larger than any other cruise ship, that has more to do on it than any other cruise ship ever built, only it never goes anywhere. Quite an amazing place. It’s on a plot of land that contains 3.5 mile long mall (if you were to walk all through it, and is also adjacent to the Grand old Opry, so it’s got built-in entertainment that is top quality (if you like country music).
The hotel covers 47 acres of land and is expanding this next year to include an additional 400,000 square feet, most of which will be conference space but which will include an additional 400 rooms. Note that it currently has over 2800 rooms. Here’s a photo of the room I had a the hotel (see above). Notice the 32″ flat screen LCD TV with on demand movies, notice the cool round pillows too plus the other four pillows on each bed–cool. I talked to the maid for my room and she said that she was responsible for cleaning 16 of the rooms–she does a great job–almost as good as Holly at making the bed.
Here’s a view of 1/2 of one the three atriums in the place. The roundish brick structure about half-way back is a restaurant/bar that rotates! Wow! Notice the glass ceiling that encloses the plants–this area is climate controlled year-round and is absolutely stunning.
Here’s one of the plants pictured below. Obviously someone there, really knows how to grow plants.
I took a ton of photos here as you might well imagine and will hopefully find some time to blog about the rest of the hotel at some later point. As for what we learned at the conference, that’s too long to blog about, but I will say that we should start heading in new directions on certain things this next year and in the years to come.
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