I’ve been pretty much offline for the last three days due to the UKLUG meeting in London. On Wednesday I went along and helped out stuff the bags and set up what we could and then on Thursday and today a few of us just acted as general dogs-bodies. By all accounts it was a really good couple of days with interesting presentations but most importantly good people to talk to during the breaks for coffee, lunch and beer!
So a little wrap-up is in order I guess. In terms of the speakers we had some great people talking with some of the superstars of the Lotus community speaking like Paul Mooney, Bill Buchan, Rob Novak, Gab Davies, Jamie Magee and many more. But two great things about UKLUG which sets it apart from other events are the incredible number of sponsors (there were 23 who filled the sponsors area, gave really interesting sessions and as far as I could tell spoke to a lot of the people who came along to the event) and also the new speakers, whether they were “case studies” like Cardiff University or new community members like my friend Mark Myers.
I know I’m biased, but I had a really good time over the last couple of days, so I hope that means other people did as well.
There was one important thing which we didn’t do during the closing session and that was to thank Warren properly for all of his work. These big user group events normally need one or two people driving them, ILUG has Paul Mooney and Eileen Fitzgerald, and UKLUG has Warren Elsmore. There are a few of us who help with lifting and carrying around the edges, but really it’s hard to imagine the amount of effort that is required from the figureheads of these events, there’s dealing with the venue, sponsors, speakers and the other organisers (much like herding cats for the latter group I can assure you!). It really is a superhuman effort, over a long period of time. So if you bump into Warren make sure you thank him for his work.
Also Warren mentioned that we will be sending out the conference evalutations soon. For those that didn’t make the closing session, basically we’ll be asking you for your feedback and in return we’ll be putting together as many of the session slides as we can, so please make sure you fill in the evaluation when we send the email out.
Now I really, really need some sleep 🙂
