Monday 27 April 2009

ACCU 2009: The aftermath

The ACCU conference is without doubt, the technical highlight of my year. A chance to put down the tools for a while, and spend time with other like-minded developers who care about crafting great code.

ACCU 2009 was last week. I'm now recovering! Every year the conference induces brain overload, and sleep deprivation. I never fail to learn exciting new stuff, to be encouraged to think new thoughts, and to meet interesting fellow developers.

I'm not going to provide an enormous writeup of this year's event here. There are many people who have done such a thing already in their blogs. If you didn't go, then no doubt they'll make very interesting reading.

This year, I learnt that going to bed before 4am does help with the delivery of your session the next day! Perhaps I was not as animated as usual, but I trust my session on Living with Legacy Code was useful.

It's a great technical conference, but it has a wonderful social aspect, too. This year spaces drunk tabs under the table (well, around it, at least) to settle an old score that a game of squash simple couldn't answer: which is God's One True Way To Format. And over the course of the event much money was raised for Bletchly Park, a suitable and very worthy cause.

My thanks go to the dedicated team of conference organisers and administrators, to every speaker, and to the delegates who made the event another incredible success. If you missed it this year, I highly recommend booking a place at next year's conference. I have no idea what the programme will look like, but I already know it'll be good.

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