Ed Brill

As expected, LH437 landed in Düsseldorf straight up at 6 AM, on schedule.  I was able to sleep about five hours on the flight, enough to feel reasonably alert upon arrival.  The rental car and drive this morning were nothing to write home about -- a Ford Fusion and congested roadways.  Still, arrived in Dortmund plenty early; good thing, too, as navigating the city center had a few challenges.

I'm sitting in the opening keynote at EntwicklerCamp 2005.  There appear to be about 150 delegates.  The setting is quite fascinating -- a building called The Depot, which has the feel more of an artist's colony than a conference center.  The room we're in now is lit by skylight, and the sun has just come out -- a good omen for this event.

Several familiar faces already this morning, from both continents.  Rudi Knegt is busy running around getting last minute details together; I've also seen Lotus Partner Forum participants Berfried Geiger, Jens Augustiny, and Florian Lier.  From over the pond, Ben Langhinrichs is here, as well as Gary Devendorf.  I thought I had a picture of Gary preparing his presentation, but apparently I forgot the "save" button on the camera phone.

My colleague Hardy Köhler is presenting the opening keynote, covering some of the highlights from Lotusphere as well as the top-level plan for Notes/Domino 7.  He said something about edbrill.com, sounded like he called it a "cult site" (note to self: when are we going to start taking German lessons?).  He's asked the audience a few questions... How many testing Notes/Domino 7?  At first, I thought there were few hands on this, but Hardy pointed out that Germans don't always raise their hands quite as visibly as I'm used to state-side.  He said that about 30% of the room indicated that they are running the Notes/Domino 7 beta, and even several who are running on Linux.

After Hardy's presentation, I'm headed out for a bit of sightseeing, and a likely jetlag-induced nap.  This conference is a little bit different, in that the evening entertainment tonight is a showing of the film, "Tron".  Remember that one?