Day 0 of OpenForce EU 08
So Natalie and I are here at the conference hotel for the OpenForce Europe conference. We got here around 4pm, checked into our room, I did some work for my presentation and then we decided to walk around the hotel a little bit around 5pm. Well 6.5 hours later I made it back up to the hotel room. We made it to the bar in the hotel, and from there it was all downhill, or uphill depending on how you look at it. Dinner was from 7pm – 9pm, then we made our way to the bowling alley.
That’s right, there’s a bowling alley in this hotel, actually 4 lanes. If you’re a bowler, like I used to try to be, these lanes aren’t really conducive to working on your game. The lanes are what you might call dry, and for someone like me who can’t bowl straight anymore, the spin grip is ridiculous on the lanes. I put more balls into the gutter tonight than I think I have in my life. It was fun though, lots of drinking, talking, playing. I also believe this is the first time I have ever made myself bleed at a bowling alley. I have a nice cut on my heal from my massive leg kick I have from bowling, I caught the underside of the ball return, ouch.
Let’s see if I can rattle off the folks I got to meet today/tonight who I’ve not met before.
Leigh Pointer (this is one funny guy, great guy to hang with)
Tim Huckaby, this dude used to be Tony Hawk’s neighbor, if that isn’t cool I don’t know what is.
Remi Caron
Joop Pecht
Miguel Castro (a NJ guy from Miami, go figure ;) )
Stephen Forte (this guy has too much fun)
Nick Hodges (stuck in Cali from MN)
Beth Massi (a MS employee)
Brian Noyes (a former F-14 pilot, how cool is that?)
Oliver Sturm
Tom Kraak (from Seablick, ready to rip my SEO presentation apart tomorrow!)
Stefan Cullmann
Ernst Peter Tamminga
Mark Blomsma (picked us up at the airport)
Eric Visser (picked us up at the hotel!)
I am sure I missed someone in there, if so I apologize. I’m going to dust off my presentations make sure I am ready for tomorrow. Tomorrow (today actually) I am presenting two topics, one on DNN and SEO and the other relating to building a business around opensource relating my experiences to DNN.
If you read this, be sure to come up and say hello. I might be one of the biggest guys here, but I promise you I am rather friendly.