BLUG: Conference review

BLUG started for me on monday afternoon when driving from my office to Brussels.Took me about 3 hours for 250 kilometers. Arrived at the hotel at 7:00 pm where Theo and some of the conference speakers already sat at the bar and had a beer or two.

After I was introduced by Theo to Belgian beer, we went downstairs for the speaker’s briefing and a dinner. After more beer and a lot of conversation, Day 0 ended at 1:30 am.
The night was short but somehow I managed to move my body to the breakfast room at 6:30 am.

Later on, I put Tim Clark, Paul Withers and Martin Leyrer into my car and we drove to the IBM Forum Brussels. The first thing we saw was the yellow Lotus car in front of the building.

The conferenc started with a keynote speech from Alistair Rennie followed by Laurent Boes talking about the latest Lotusphere announcenents in complement to the OGS.

The breakout sessions started after a short coffee break. The forum staff did a great job in dividing one big room into 3 for the upcoming sessions. The technical staff was always available to fix minor problems or get the microphone to work properly.

All sessions were well attended. The developer track had 3 sessions in a row about XPages. The rooms was crowded; no surprise is that.

My session on DAOS went well, although I was a bit nervous because of the fact that I had never before spoken at an international conference.

Thanks to Theo for immediate response of what attendees said about my session.

The bar opened at 4 pm and Theo raffled sponsor’s giveaways. ( T-Shirts, books, umbrellas and even a license for a Ytria EZ suite).

Back at the hotel, we had at least 30 minutes to change clothes before we drove downtown Brussels. Beer, wine and great food were a perfect closing of a perfect day.

We celebrated Matt White’s 8th blogging anniversary. Don’t know what the waiter was thinking when we start singing “Happy blogging .. “.

Thanks again to Theo and the team ( IBMers and Non-IBMers )  for making this conference a great and successful event. It was also a pleasure to meet the other speakers.