2 conferences, 2 countries, 2 wornout travelers

Man, it’s been an incredibly long week.  One that’s ending with me on my own and Aoife still in Germany.  The last few days both of us went to conferences in different countries.  Aoife, to a conference in Berlin to present her long labored paper on Smart Metering, and I to a nerd conference (as Clare liked calling it) about the Future of Web Apps in London.  Although by coincidence there was talk of smart metering and energy policies as well.

Only last week I saw a note that FOWA needed volunteers.  The only other conference I’ve ever been to was one a couple of years ago, and I can’t say that I particularly enjoyed myself at that one and I thought maybe getting involved would be a little more exciting.  I think it was, but I also thought the people at this conference had a little bit more to say.

So for most of the conference I sat in the back helping out with the video production.  Not a bad way to go, I got to see most all the sessions I wanted to see and got to work with some great guys.  You can see a picture of Piyush and I hanging out by the camera stand in the second picture.

Not only did I get to hang out in London for a few days but also got to spend some time chilling with Clare (of the Clare and Greg duo, not to be confused with Claire and James our other friends).  It was really nice as a lot of Aoife’s friends I know from going out the odd time we’re in Dublin but rarely do I get to talk to them one on one and get to know them.  Thanks Clare for your hospitality, hope I wasn’t too much of a hassle taking over your living room.

After two days of hard work I came back to Cambridge yesterday and crashed pretty hard.  It looks like it’s going to be a fairly hard week ahead as well with lots going on.  I’m trying to finish a couple of things and also start building on Jake’s site which I’m really getting excited about.  It will be good to catch up with Aoife tomorrow and we might try to go out and use one of our wedding presents this week which was a gift certificate to a nice restaurant in town.

You can check out what I thought was one of the best talks and one of the sessions I helped film (I use this word loosely, by film I mean I pushed record and changed data cards when needed) with on Simon Wardley’s engaging talk titled “Innovation, the future and why nothing is ever simple.”

Credit: Thanks to tö for putting the photos up on flickr.