Abu Dhabi - Day 1

Morning is morning. Makes you want to stay in bed. Hit the snooze. Close the curtains. Hide from the sun.
But you just cant do that when you have work.
So we were off to the conference by 8am. The dude at the front desk told us that it could take 30 minutes to get there because of traffic so we thought leaving at 8 was safe.
We truly needed to be there for 9am to pick up our credentials, set up the gear, and be ready to roll for the 10am key note speech by Tarek Ben Ammar.
Turns out, the Intercon was less than 5 minutes away from our hotel. So we were there obnoxiously early.
We took advantage of the time by setting up, getting a good audio feed from the sound man, and then lazing about waiting for people to arrive. (Would have been better to be in bed but.....)
The conference kicked off, we got Tarek's speech, interviewed a bunch of people, filmed a few more panels, interviewed some more people, met a hilarious Iranian producer named Negin, had lunch with a 3D wiz named Angus, and headed back for the hotel for an hour or 2 of much needed nap time before heading back for another panel at 6pm.
We arrived late for the panel (right at the end of it), caught a quick interview, and then we were off to the reception hosted by the Royal Jordanian Film Commission. Fancy little food and drinks were being passed around and lots chatter and networking.
I ran into Kellen, a good old friend from Tribeca New York and caught up for a bit. Apparently we found out I was in Abu Dhabi because his google alerts brought up my blog. hahaha Maybe he'll see this one too.
Fatma, Ahmed, and I got our parting gifts (a wicked Jordanian ghotra) and we off to our hotel. We were all exhausted and hungry. Ahmed and I housed the buffet at the hotel and that was it for the evening. I slept like a fat baby all night.