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Title: Editorial: In Between
Author: Martin Moene
Date: 09 May 2015 14:14:56 +01:00 or Sat, 09 May 2015 14:14:56 +01:00
Summary:
Body:
The congruence of a variety of events means that I am writing this whilst attending the ACCU 2015 conference. This is simultaneously a good thing and a bad thing: I am surrounded by interesting people, and immersed in an atmosphere that is intensely geeky (and not just about programming, either!). There are almost 400 people here in Bristol, representing 24 countries from Sweden to Brazil and Russia to Saudi Arabia. This is my 14th conference, and I keep coming because I know the talks will be entertaining and educational, the people will be fascinating, and I will learn plenty of new things every single day. And therein lies the problem...there is so much to do, see and learn, there’s precious little time in which to concentrate on writing the 300 or so words for the magazine!
The truth is that the conference schedule is punishing. It’s rare to find a session slot having only one talk I wish to attend, but the difficulty of choosing doesn’t end there. There are always interesting conversations happening in the corridors, bar corners, over breakfast and lunch, excursions in the evenings to find dinner and perhaps a drink or two (ahem!) and then even after all that, the hotel bar is frequently teeming with delegates until the early hours. It’s not even limited to actual conversation, either. Twitter and other similar virtual cafes are alive with chatter and anecdotes – which sometimes mean you can get a gist of some of the things you've missed, and sometimes mean you feel you’ve missed out on something important!
After all that, it’s still necessary to catch at least a few hours’ sleep ‘in between’. By the end of the week, I know I shall be a near-wreck: the effects of a head full of exciting ideas, inspired by whole talks or just snippets of conversation, combined with too much alcohol and insufficient sleep will leave me exhausted. But happy. Because whilst it’s inevitable that I missed some things (you can’t do everything!), I will have done some of it – and profited hugely by it. If you were at the conference, I hope you enjoyed it at least as much as I always do. If you’ve never been, I cannot recommend it enough.
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