I am in London waiting for my flight home.

This was my first Kscope as an attendee and as a speaker. I loved every minute of the conference! It did not start very well, probably because June was really busy for me. First of all I did not book the hotel in time and could not get a room from Sheraton. Well, I did get a room from Westin and that hotel was really nice. Secondly I forgot to book the flights and did it at the last minute (and I payed for my mistake quite dearly) by a help of a travelling agent that found me from Twitter. Isn’t that cool! Well, unfortunately that was not all… Next I realized I had not registered for the conference and the registration was closed already. Thanks to Lauren who seems to understand us speakers better that we do ourselves handled everything and there was no issue at all. I could have stopped here and try to be smart but no… Two hours before my session I went to check the conference app to see that I have the right version of my presentation there…no…it was not the right version, in matter of the fact it was a completely wrong presentation. Yep. I did upload the right one but updated it with the wrong one just before I left Finland. Well, I uploaded the right one and one more time checked that my slides on my laptop were the right slides. Now I was getting nervous: what will happen next? Mr Murphy was obviously very fond of me.

I was a panelist on WIT panel hosted by Kellyn Pot’vin. I think this panel was really good. We had a huge audience, both women and men, and they really were interested in the topic. A lot of interaction!

I had my session, 9 Use Cases for Data Modeler, right after the panel. I was quite nervous, which I am usually not. But when I started to present and my audience was just fantastic I was not nervous at all: I enjoyed. I had a great audience! Thank you! You really inspire me!

The content of the conference was very high and everything was so fluent. I will need to ask ODTUG board for some advice on getting sponsors and more attendees. I do not think many user groups today can say they have more attendees every year and sponsors signing already for next year. Well done!

It is always important to have good content and plenty of good food in conferences but still I think the best is to meet friends and make some new ones. I was so happy to see many of my friends and finally to meet some of my ‘virtual friends’. I attended several sessions and learnt a lot. I gave a couple of interviews on WIT and on ACE program. I met my publisher and my tech editors. I had a great dinner sponsored by the ACE program (thank you, Vikki!) and I even drunk some beer (luckily Jeff Smith came to help me out, I was quite desperate:-), I do not drink beer and I do not like it). And I was so glad to see Mike Riley and I wish all the best to him and his family.

Thank you ODTUG for having me as a speaker and letting me to attend and experience this amazing conference! And thank you for the great party! Cannot wait Kscope15 and Florida!

What I do not get is why do they say it always rains in Seattle?