Zi's Blog

It’s over… Until the next time and I can’t wait! What a fabulous day I had. One of the hardest days of the year for me but well worth it!

The day started off with when Ian, Craig and myself up for breakfast at 6.30am with bad hangovers from the community leaders dinner and drinks in the hotel bar. After breakfast we had to make are way, by car to TVP* which should normally be a 15min drive. But naturally on the way there we got lost! Typical Luckily we were not too late. The first speaker briefing was at 8am and the second was at 8.30ish. This is were we run through a couple of the house rules, check if the speakers need anything, remind them of font sizes and basic things like that.

The rest of the morning involved me doing one of the opening talks in Memphis, printing of the Geek Dinner wiki and the Lunch Time wiki, deciding who should do a Grok talk and what Park Bench should happen oh and general running around like a headless chicken checking on “stuff” (have no idea what now…).

Lunch Time
I eventually decided to run 6 Grok talks:

• John Price – Developing form the living room – Media Center Markup Language
• Richard Costall – Yes, I talk to my PC – Vista Speech
• Liam Westley – How to get rid of project managers from your project – tips for Technical Leads
• Colin Angus Mackay – Introducing Mock Objects
• Thom Shannon - GDI+ Image manipulation quirks (the border bug)
• Chris Seary – How HTTPModules changed my life

They all went very well and I think everyone there had a good time. Introducing an Agile development process was the topic for the park bench this time. Big thanks to Benjamin for hosting the Park Bench!

After DDD
A few of us went to the revolutions bar in central Reading for a few drinks before heading off to Pizza Express for the geek dinner. Big thanks go to the staff for providing brilliant service yet again! Have a look at the this to see what others thought of the day.

* I didn’t know this before Friday so though some of you might not not it either… See I’m getting into the Microsoft lingo.
TVP = Thames Valley Park(I think) = Microsoft Reading
GPS = Great Pulteney Street = Microsoft London

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