Mid-UKLUG
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Its a quiet time here at UKLUG right now, most delegates are in one of the 2 sessions currently being held and that gives us sponsors a chance to see each others products, update notes on customer & prospect conversations, test technical queries or practice juggling.
I've only managed to attend 3 sessions so far due to commitments on the stand but to briefly summarise: Ed Brill's keynote was excellent. I am glad that Ed came over and supported UKLUG. He mentioned a commitment to release 8.5.1 & 8.5.2 next year, plus Notes 9 (or whatever its called) in 2010 - The future is bright in Notes Domino land.
Gurupalooza, facilitated by Bob Balaban, which was enlightening as the beer had come out by then, with one peach dropped in that can't be blogged about. Many questions were in Ed's direction as expected, but everyone else pitched in with juicy gems of their own.
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8.5 demos with Paul Mooney & Matt White. Matt is clearly a fan of XPages and I can see why. The things that can be done out of the box with Xpages are impressive. As predominantly a dev, with only a slight admin hat, I was surprised to be more impressed by the improvements on the admin side. Despite having a technical hitch, Paul explained the new ID Vault, which will be fantastic, and DAOS also looks like it will help save us from the dreaded users.
UKLUG as an event is certainly a huge step up in scale from last year. Being in central London has been important for the event to be a success. The venue is excellent. The speakers are first rate. The only disappointment, apart from the beer price and reception food, is that I'm not sure there are 300 delegates here. It looks more like 150-200, such a high dropout rate on a fully booked, free event is a shame. Considering the effort put in by Warren & the team every registrant deserved to see the fruits of their significant labour.
UKLUG as an event is certainly a huge step up in scale from last year. Being in central London has been important for the event to be a success. The venue is excellent. The speakers are first rate. The only disappointment, apart from the beer price and reception food, is that I'm not sure there are 300 delegates here. It looks more like 150-200, such a high dropout rate on a fully booked, free event is a shame. Considering the effort put in by Warren & the team every registrant deserved to see the fruits of their significant labour.
Comments
I wasn't able to come along anyway, as my team had a number of people on annual leave.
But even if I had been signed up, I'd have had to pull out due to the way the financial markets went. In the finance sector, people were being pulled back from leave and the idea that anyone could take a day off became quite foreign.
Posted by Philip Storry At 04:34:41 AM On 09/22/2008 | - Website - |
That, is always the flip side of running a free event.... people get complacent.
Posted by Paul Mooney At 04:36:27 AM On 09/22/2008 | - Website - |
As someone who had to drop out of the previous year's UKLUG at very short notice due to my employment, I'm all too aware that they should let you know.
(And I still feel guilty for the lack of notice on my part, I'm afraid! Work just didn't allow it at the time then either...)
Your efforts are appreciated, even if I couldn't go myself. If anyone starts the old "Notes is dead" debate, I can point to UKLUG and ILUG as events that show it still has a lot of people using it - and very actively!
Posted by Philip Storry At 07:48:09 AM On 09/22/2008 | - Website - |
Without knowing the exact numbers of registrations and the number of attendees on each day, it is pure speculation on whether UKLUG has suffered more than others.
The point originally was that my impression during the event was that it felt quieter on the stand than I expected, having experienced a couple of busy DNUGs in 05 & 06. There are many contributory reasons I believe. One of which is unforeseen work commitments, another is general apathy amongst UK Notes professionals. The best way to reduce the apathy is to spread the community further with more great events and make people feel like they really missed out by not attending.
Of course, there is no blame on Warren & the team for this, and I do want to make clear that I think they did a fantastic job and should be showered in glory and thanks at every opportunity.
Grant
Posted by Grant Norman At 09:39:08 AM On 09/22/2008 | - Website - |