So, having made the decision to meet up at London for the osCommerce public meeting, my first task was to book train tickets as there’s no way I’m driving! With that done, and quite cheaply too I might add, I then had to decide on the logistics of getting from my place to the train station (2.5 hours drive), then the train (another 2 hours). As I had never been to London, the experience was novel, especially the tube (underground system) – tip for anyone; try not to mix up “north” and “south” ahem 😉
I finally arrived at the Match Bar after some wandering around the sights and sounds of London. A round of introductions ensued – everyone knew who I was by the name, which was great (or maybe not so great, depending upon how you look at it lol). I met;
– Harald Ponce de Leon
– Mark Evans
– Matthijs vd Vegte
– Jan Zonjee
– Nick Weisser
– Mark from the forum and who has posted on this blog as “enigma1”
– Bruno and his business partner (Presta Shop guys)
– Yubico Guy (there will be a post soon about Yubi Key, their product)
— as well as more whose names I am afraid to say I forget – sorry!
We discussed the past, present and, importantly, the future of osCommerce – with some debate about the commerical aspect of osCommerce [how it is seen by different people], some of the forum characters, some of the people intent on destroying osCommerce and lots of other stuff. It was a worthwhile exercise and great to finally meet up with people who I’ve “known” for a long time but never met in real life.
Some great ideas were brought up, not only for osCommerce, but also for the osCommerce forum – I truly believe that osCommerce will be seen (once again) as something which people will want to use.
Summing up; really great to meet some good guys and would have been nice to see more UK people make an effort to be there, after all, it’s not often that you have the chance to speak with the developers of a software application face-to-face. Watch out for the next osCommerce meeting (coming up soon), which will be a BLAST!
I would have loved to go there, I heard something about one for the future, which I am hoping to attend. I too have never been to London (or the UK) and am looking forward to meeting up with the people whop have been around for so many years.
I hope the meeting was fun, exciting and down to earth with comments and discussions (and a few beers thrown in for chuckles). Hope that in the future I too might enjoy the company of the “in” crowd and see some of the sights there as well (big ben is definitely on my list of to see things 🙂 ).
cheers
Peter – it was a very good meeting and met interesting people. Can’t say that I would choose to go to London again though lol.
HPDL’s write up on the meeting;
http://blogs.oscommerce.com/2009/12/16/london-public-meet-up/
Nick’s write up of the London Meeting:
http://blog.openstream.ch/2009/12/oscommerce-public-meet-up-in-london.html