UKOUG Blogger Meet-up and Day Two

I managed to work on my presentation a bit yesterday afternoon. I was discussing this will Niall later on and there's a point when you know you are going to be finished and you've broken the back of it, but you still have a lot of work to do. That's where I am at the moment. However, feeling a lot more relaxed, I headed along to the exhibition opening drinks, knowing I'd bump into a few old friends. As usual, and I've no idea why it works out this way, I ended up talking to various UKOUG directors, Peter Robson, Jonathan Lewis and Peter Phillips. As well as having known them for a while and the fact they're thoroughly nice chaps, there's always something I can quiz them about. One of my comments this year was on the new-style badges which seem a bit low-tech, until you realise that they're reusable for future events, which seems like a thoroughly sensible idea in retrospect. Peter was chuffed to bits that he'd purloined a copy of Toon Koppelaar's book at a presentation earlier that day I bumped into Toon earlier in the day and practically the first words out of his mouth were 'so have you got past chapter 1 yet?' Must try harder ....

Then it was the Bloggers Meet-up. I was gutted, though, because I'd received an earlier email from Andy C to explain that his UKOUG agenda was a virtual one. That was a real shame as I'd been looking forward to meeting him and Brian the Footballer had no-one to have a sensible football-related conversation with The Boys put in an appearance and I'm sure there'll be some photos appearing at some point (actually I've just had a call from Peter Robson and he has them on a memory stick). It seemed a lot quieter than I was expecting so maybe word didn't get around as much as I'd hoped, but I still met plenty of people and had good chat. I was particularly pleased to meet Dominic Brooks, who always seems like a kindred spirit when I read his blog and I can only apologise for thinking he was Dominic Giles at first! As usual at a conference, I was completely shattered and retired via a quick visit to the chippy. I was in bed by 22:45. God knows how that Alex G manages it!

At this point it's traditional to thank Mark Rittman and the folk at UKOUG for organising and sponsoring the event. I think I recall Last Orders at 9:30, so we definitely put in an impressive performance on the bar tab. Must have been all the Russian beer