Theo's Blog

ILUG 2008 has been a great event. Paul, Eileen and all the others who made this possible (including all sponsors): Thank you very much. We owe you !

For me the most important aspect of the event was the intense networking going on from morning to evening night. I've met/talked to/shook hands with/had dinner with so many people it's mind boggling. Because I handed out the now famous read-my-blog-buttons, I had a brief/longer/long chat with around 60 fellow-bloggers from all over the world. But the idea behind the button seem to work, as many attendees came over and said hello. ILUG is different than Lotusphere, as it's more intimate, informal, yet just as informative.

During the opening session, Alan Lepofski was his usual self, and was as enlightening as ever. Teamstudio, a sponsor of the event was next, with a really interesting presentation. Next up: Bruce Elgort and Kevin Pettitt. With their usual flair, they talked about all the goodies on openntf. Bill Bucan, the (green) man from Mars, handled webservices, hilarious as ever, but delivering content at the same time. The 'official' evening was closed with a 'speedsponsoring' event, where every sponsor could talk for 5 and only 5 minutes to a little group of people, who had to move to the next booth for another 5 minute pitch. It worked out very well indeed.
We ended up with a group of around 15 people (among them Bruce Elgort, Julian Robichaux, Ben Poole, Ken Haggman) in an Indian restaurant, and we had a blast ! Thanks Ken for sponsoring the drinks. Some of us ended up in the hotel bar (Guinness!). Steve and Rob McDonagh where there too !

The second day started way earlier. At 9 Rob, after a short night, had to do a presentation on setting up a test-environment. Interesting, but not my cup of tea. Eric from sponsor Ytria was next. Using a lot of real world cases, he showed of all the goodies in ScanEZ, ViewEZ, ActionbarEZ en the rest of their can't-do-without suit of tools. Ed Brill, hopping over from DNUG in Germany talked about the road behind and ahead. Mary Beth Raven was having a ball (as was everyone in the packed room), talking about the 8.5 improvements, and the reasons behind it. Watch her, as she and here team are going to make 8.5 and beyond into a world-class experience for both the user and the developer. Integra4Notes was next: Rock solid Notes-Office-Symphony integration. Rob Novak show us the power of Dojo, and a taste of Guinness (tx Rob). He certainly stimulated me to dig into this framework.
Speedgeeking finished this days event. I saw some cool 5-minutes presentations from Sean Burgess (ASND exporter), Gab Davis (Console commands), Julian Robichaux (Composite Apps),...
After the earned/needed/obligatory pints, I had a quite diner with Martin, Ulrich and Thomas. Finally got to bed the same day I got out of it !

Final day: Mary Beth about customizing 8; Bruce, Sean and Matt about IdeaJam, and finally Kevin Pettitt about his SuperNTF. All of them interesting, especially Kevin, as he's done some cool stuff. During lunch, I had a chat with some guys, and I really felt the need for design examples. I'll probably end up with a couple of blogs about some of the UI stuff I came up with over the years.
As I had to catch a plane, I couldn't stay until the end, so I missed out on some sessions, including the closing session, and the geeks's diner.

I'm really glad I came to ILUG, and do recommend it to anyone: loads of information, networking, Guinness ! cu there next time.

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