Well we're back from another successful Revelation Conference and we'd just like to say a big "thank you" to Revelation for organising it. Thank you also to all of the attendees who dropped by our stand and opted to "take Sprezzatura's Speakers home with them". Whilst we don't know if it's true that "Sprezzatura always have the best giveaways" as several people commented, it is nice to know that our efforts to provide giveaways that combine a promotional message with something that you can actually use are appreciated.

Highlights and lowlights of the conference will differ for everybody, but for us some of the highlights included the comments of our fellow developers.

The fact that Aaron Kaplan is back with Sprezz after a two year hiatus met with universal approval - especially as he will be moving back to Philly and thus be more on time zone to help with our US clients there. He won't actually be there until summer - there are too many logistics to sort out, but we know many of you look forward to seeing him again - if not before then at next year's conference.

Carl's talk on embedding the web browser control was admired by many for the way in which he took a potentially highly technically complex subject and reduced it to a series of easily comprehensible slides and presentations. As one delegate said afterwards "you know - I consider myself to be a technically competent developer, but when I see the things that Carl puts together I realise that I'm just not in the same league". We don't know about that, but we appreciated the sentiment.

Andrew's talk on troubleshooting OI systems using system logs was well received with one delegate expressing surprise that such powerful tools had been in the product for so long, but that he'd never heard of them. Perhaps our favourite delegate quote was from one well respected developer who commented that this presentation had taught him more long-term useful information than any other session he'd attended at this conference. Even Sean (Revelation’s documentation maven) left with some information he said he could add to the documentation.

The low point of the conference for us had to be Andrew's concussion (caused by a wind borne heavy cushion – hence a con-cushion) at the roof party on the Tuesday evening which led to a lost evening for him. Andrew lost the next day as the concussion continued to move him in and out of consciousness before his hospital visit followed by a sometimes painful and frequently scary next few days as the concussion played havoc with his short term memory and anxiety levels. He is very grateful to all delegates who helped him avoid trouble in the aftermath of the post party concussion and those who volunteered to submit witness statements to the hotel management concerning the event. Four days after the event, the symptoms continue but at least they seem to be lessening.

Perhaps the highlight of the conference for most was seeing just how mature the O4W product has become. It really seems as though this might be the next generation of development tools from the Rev stable to help our community easily deliver Web 2.0 based applications. In the medium term, this could even be the tool to help us to reach out to a wider community. Equally as exciting was the announcement of the new M class licensing for people who wish to use another back end database, but use the OI front end tools for development.

Finally we have to give a big shout out to the newer Revelation Staff - Jared Bratu and Erik Smith - who both provided incredibly polished maiden talks, made all the more impressive by their lack of previous form. It's great to see such obvious enthusiasm from the next generation of Revelation programmers.

All in all the conference had something for everyone and so we look forward to seeing you all at the Rio again next year for RevCon 2011!

Labels: conference