Not much blogging for me this time, I've been too busy meeting people, making new friends, getting to know some of my new colleagues better and just having fun!

Here are some random thoughts, as much as a journal for me to compare with my next ApacheCon as to motivate you to join next time if you weren't here!

The pictures over at flickr will give you a feel for the excellent vibe of this edition, and several presentations are available for download.

My favorite presentations have been the ones on Lucene, Yonik and Grant did a great job on their respective topics, and I'll make sure to read the book recommended by Grant. There's a lot of interest in Lucene, Solr and Jackrabbit, these seem to be the projects to watch for many people here.

All the presentations that I attended have been very good, in my opinion the program and quality were the best in the last three EU ApacheCons.

This morning's keynote by Matt Bidulph made me want to go back to hacking hardware that makes things (even virtual ones) move.

For the first time I stepped up to do a lightning talk (no lottery this year, so getting in was easy), and doing it is a lot of fun despite the pressure. I'll post some of these Orthogonal Acronym Meanings later on.

My two talks went well and there was quite a lot of interest and feedback. Thanks to all the people who gave additional information and opinions on the XSLT without the pain thing. I gave this talk for the first time and the feedback will help me improve it if I have to give it elsewhere.

The Fast Feather track is a great idea, I hope it happens again. Stefan mentioned that it's a good way for people to test their speaking skills without the pressure of a talk in the main tracks.

All in all, my third ApacheCon has been excellent, and on top of that my wife joined yesterday so we're off to some tourism and fun before going back tomorrow evening. We even went on a boat cruise with Madame Royal yesterday evening, how fun! Although it looks like she might not be the one that the French are talking about.

Big thanks to everyone involved in making this happen, you did a great job and I hope the finances confirm this.