What a day! I am tired but I try to explain what happened today with a few lines.
The venue - Autoworld - is a museum full of cars from all eras, most of them very rare and unbelievable expensive. I am not so much into cars but I like the exhibition. Our area is split into two major areas: the main area at the first floor where also 3 rooms/areas for the sessions are and where the OGS was taking place. The other part at the entrance is about 100m away and on the ground floor. This means if you commute to the rooms over the day you make a decent amount of kilometers and floors. For me today is was 7,6km including the way from and to the hotel and in the evening to the meeting point (the Sofitel again).
If you follow the hashtag #EngageUG on Tiwtter - which you probably do - you already saw stunning images and informations about the future of the former ICS products now run by HCL. I attended several sessions today. For me the outstanding sessions were the OGS and the discussion about the transition from the IBM Champion programme to the HCL Master and Grandmaster programme. It wasn’t about the content but the spirit while the discussion went on and the good feeling that we can move something - together with HCL.
HCL is here with a huge amount of people from the development department and executives as well. To all you can talk very open and they appreciate your input. Some may say the technology around the Domino platform is dead, yes even Connections is hard to evangelize. There has been times when this was true but not anymore. The community is more vibrant than ever and the vendor is hungry to improve and drive forward - at a high speed.
Long story short, the evening was all about networking at the VIP dinner. This was at the Grand Market Place close to the central station. We got there with two busses, around 130 people. We had welcome drinks and then good food. It tasted good but overall was like a starter - and everyone was waiting for the main dish. I didn’t. Even if there had been another course I would have skipped it because I had enough.
Then we were transported back to the Sofitel were I had a last beer with my friend Eknori with whom I also shared a taxi afterwards.