There’s nothing like a long New England winter to make a body embrace a few days in the warm Santa Barbara sunshine. Last week, I found myself thanking my luckier stars that MarketingProfs founder Allen Weiss hails from southern California and not, say, Boise.

No offense to you Boise folks, of course. But April in Santa Barbara beats April in Boise, in my book. Actually, it beats April just about anywhere.

But enough about the weather. The real highlight of last week was the gathering of most of the MarketingProfs team, all 20-plus of us, who got together on our annual retreat.

Because MarketingProfs is a virtual company – our staff is scattered through the US – and because we have grown like a spring dandelion over the past year, many of us met for the first time.

As my colleague Jim Kelly, who sells ads for MarketingProfs, puts it, "I always come away from junkets with a renewed enthusiasm. This was no exception."

In other words, there’s nothing like some off-line face-time to deepen the experience and connections of online relationships. This was reinforced for me in Santa Barbara, and earlier in the week at Blogger Social in New York. There, 80-plus marketing bloggers convened, and most of us met for the first time, too.

Last week, one of the many tasks at hand last week was to update our all-staff photo. ("Wear solid colors! Smile!" urged our own Sharon Hudson.) That will be up on the site in the next week or two. But in the meantime,
here’s a glimpse of several of us touring the historically very cool Santa Barbara court house.

Some key people are missing, and you’ll also notice a few members of our "Web 3.0" team, but you get the idea.