I really enjoyed meeting a lot of new people - veterans to rooks! I hope everyone else made new contacts because IMO that's what these gatherings are all about. Learning how to do something new or being exposed to new platforms and technologies is great, but there are other channels for these things (e.g. classrooms, blogs, books, and more). The opportunities to really talk to people face-to-face in our industry outside of our regular circles are few and far between.
Some personal mistakes I made:
- I titled the session I was most excited about presenting: "ALM Quantified". Because I've lived with the ALM acronym for a few years now, I assumed more people would know what it was (Application Lifecycle Management). Next time I'll know better.
- Another assumption was that if I put a lot of exciting sessions at the end of the day on Saturday, people would be more likely to stay throughout. It was naive to think I could push people this hard. The attendees started very early on Friday and were in session until after 5pm that evening. Many stayed several hours after in the Home nightclub and got up early again on Saturday. Thank you all for enduring and I hope you don't feel cheated of some of some great sessions.
