Rob's Blog

27/5: Just back from Dublin ...

Julie and I have just returned from a few days in Dublin timed to coincide with the third ILUG event.  I didn't go to the first one but was at the second last year.  This time, the event was held over two full days with three full streams of seminars.  Organisation was first class.  This was a first rate event thanks to the professional planning, project management and fulfilment skills of Paul, Eileen, Kitty, Warren, Bill and Tom.  All sessions started on time.  That's very impressive.

The event was free to attend thanks to the sponsors.  The main sponsors were IBM and RIM.  IBM's sponsorship included a free bar on Thursday evening throughout the speed geeking and beyond.  That's my kind of event!  And if that wasn't all, Rob Novak of Collaboration University fame bought everyone a Guinness in his Free Code session.  This was my first experience of the gui.nne.ss AJAX framework but I have to say I'm impressed.

One session I was particularly impressed with was Chris Blatnick's Interface Matters.  I think that the Notes client doesn't get enough attention (at least up until release 8) and Chris is doing a lot to counter that.

The various Blackberry sessions got me excited again about building a Blackberry solution for one of my clients.  I think that there's a space in the market for a generic Domino workflow solution for the Blackberry.  Does one already exist?

I also attended a few of the Admin sessions which helped me to get an idea of Clustering, Domino Domain Monitoring and SPAM prevention.  I now know enough to be dangerous!

On Saturday we joined the Geek Trip that went out of Dublin into the country.  I saw enough to decide that next time we come, we'll drive over.

So there are big hints that this event will happen again in some form next year.  It has become a great success.  Many many of the 250 people attending weren't at Lotusphere in January so this event is reaching and educating a new audience.

6/2: ILUG 2007

I've just booked our flights to Dublin in May with Ryanair from East Midlands.  We're leaving Wednesday evening and then making a weekend of it.  Can't wait.  And what's our excuse for a trip to Dublin?  Why it's the third annual Irish Lotus User Group Conference of course.



Here's the list of speakers.  Paul Mooney and Eileen Fitzgerald are doing another amazing job organizing the event again.  It's now grown to two days and it's still free to attend.