As I mentioned last month, I was able to sneak in a great professional development opportunity at work before our fiscal year is up in a couple months.

My boss found a great conference, hosted by Ragan Communications, that focused on media relations, crisis communications and social media.

The conference was good—I tweeted throughout (see #raganmedrel) and took copious notes to share with my colleagues upon my return.

I would have liked more on metrics and crisis communications—two areas I’m passionate about and can always learn more about—but there’s always next year!

In addition to enjoying the conference, I really enjoyed that the fiancé was allowed to go with me! I bought him a flight using my annual SkyMiles Companion Certificate and his work approved him working from our hotel room while I was at the conference so we were set.

After the conference, we tacked on a couple days to our trip so we could see the city. Here are a few photos from our time there.

Other Takeaways:

• We barely made it to Nobu in time for our reservation thanks to a delayed flight that caused us to hit up our taxi downtown right at rush hour, but I’m glad we tried it. We had the sushi, sashimi and tempura, which were very good, but overall I would give the experience a B. Would not make a point to go again.
• The NYC Pass was a great investment. We got several times our money’s worth for the one-day pass. It was rainy in the morning on Saturday when we had hoped to do a lot of walking around, and it was great to have a whole back-up plan of indoor activities all free with our pass. It’s the only reason we did the Radio City tour, which was actually one of the better stops of our trip.
• Thanks to social media, I was able to tag places to eat that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Thus how we ended up at Pinkberry, which was wonderful. Facebook, twitter and Foodspotting have all completely changed how we decide where to eat during our travels. There is too much amazing food and too many incredible restaurants to try to waste even one meal somewhere mediocre.
• Mobile phones have likewise changed how we travel. We used Google Maps to get around NYC without a hitch!

Great trip, but I probably won’t be back for a while. Too many other places to see. What’s next on your list?