Talk about live actionI'm actually sitting in our booth at the Inside Self-Storage Las Vegas Expo as I write. Here in the middle of it all. Tucked away at a table in the corner of the booth, with attendees peering over, wondering what the heck I'm doing. Guess a chick tap-tap-tapping away on a laptop with a mischevious look on her face must be all too intriguing.

So much has gone on since the show started on Fat Tuesday, Feb. 20th. We had our golf tournament, sponsored by DBCI, and our full-day Developers' Seminar. Yesterday, we kicked off the event's seminar sessions with a keynote presentation by legendary football coach, "Bootlegger's Boy," Barry Switzer. He's quite a pistol. Then last night, we hosted our Prime-Time Open Form, where we featured a couple of special presentations.

One of the cool things we were able to do at last night's forum is congratulate in person the parents of one of our 2007 ISS Scholarship winners, Molly Bettencourt. Molly is a student at UMASS-Amherst (my Alma Mater), where she is studying communications. She couldn't attend the show herself, but her parents were here to accept a certificate on her behalf. Here they are with our education coordinator, Marlo Sneddon:

After the scholarship presenation, we did a drawing to give away five $2,000 grants for state self-storage associations to pass along to charitable organizations of their choosing. These five organizations are our lucky recipients:

I've got photos of these presentations to post to the blog tomorrow.

We also kicked off the exhibit portion of the show today. What a rush. Imagine hundreds of your fellow storage operators, investors, developers, etc., pouring through the entrance gates ... It was a beautiful thing. Here's a picture of our grand-opening ribbon-cutters, Rob Hadden of Janus International and Nancy Martin of Chateau Products:

OK, off and running ... More later. The show will wrap up at 6 today, and then it's on to the evening cocktail reception. Good times!