My Gr8Conf.us 2013 Wrap Up

What a great year for the US Gr8Conf! It was so great meeting everyone again (and folks I had not met yet)for my 2nd year speaking. The weather the perfect, Shaun and his volunteers kept everyone running without a hiccup, talks were great, after hours events were fun. I was excited to share what I have learned with tech I have been working with lately in my talks. It was great to attend the talks as well, which such a good balance of different kinds of topics all related in some way to Grails or Groovy. What was also the benefit above all others, is to network with speakers and attendees. That's when the real world stuff comes out, problems people face, things people are trying, as well as talking with the committers themselves on many projects. Watching videos of talks is great (They recorded them this year to appear later on InfoQ), but actually GOING to these conferences (like Gr8, GGX, S2GX and others) and talking to people is where at least half the value lies. What I love about this community is everyone is approachable and humble, and helpful. I've never seen anyone act snobby or 'too good' to talk to anyone. I hope that attitude always continues, which is one of the many reasons I love this great community. Thank you sponsors OPI, Target, Bloom, and others for the wonderful events, food, and drinks. The hackathon was great, but if we had it so our API keys worked through the conference and turned our submissions morning of the last day, and possibly allow 4 person teams, even cooler stuff would come out. I personally had too elaborate of an idea, and I didn't come close to finish it for submission in 4 hours. Thanks Jeff Beck for the lovely beer gift and for our beverage ingredients, thanks to Rob Fletcher for our drink exchange. Thanks Luke for the Dave and Busters cards! If there is one thing I DEFINITELY learned, was that Dan fixed the Grails twitter notifier plugin - or something :) Hope to see everyone next year in Minneapolis!