Best. CONNECT. Ever.

It’s hard to believe another year of CONNECT has to come to a close. Last week saw hundreds of Cartegraph clients descend on our hometown of Dubuque, Iowa. We can put all kinds of time and effort into CONNECT, but when it comes down to it, our clients bring the one component no one can plan for: the passion and pride in what you do.

My fellow blogger, Brant Scheidecker, posted about it in his APWA Congress blog a few weeks back and it came through loud and clear during CONNECT as well. You love what you do. You can't wait to share what you do; not only how you're using Cartegraph, but how it has changed the way your organizations work. The energy was electric.

Everywhere I went, I could feel the buzz in the air of people sharing stories and exchanging ideas. Our client presenters led this energy and I could feel it in my work with them leading up to CONNECT.

I was lucky enough to sit in one of the first presentations on the first day by the Town of Marana, AZ. Todd Henderson and Brendan O’Connor were a testament to having passion in your work. You couldn't deny their excitement as they talked about how they took Cartegraph from the shelf to an enterprise system and continue to spread it across their organization.

You could see the passion in clients' eyes as they talked about new ideas and products, and how they could bring them back to their organizations. They were excited and couldn't wait to see how they could add to and adapt their existing operations.

If you attended CONNECT 2011 last week, I encourage you to keep that passion going as you bring your ideas back to the office. If you couldn’t make CONNECT this year or even if you did, remember there’s always User Groups scheduled in your area throughout the year.