I arrived back from the first Telligent Developer Summit this evening around 7:00PM EST. I said I'd be blogging from the road in my last post. Looks like I was just yanking your chain and that I never got around to it. Sorry. I can't say I didn't have time to blog, because I did. I think I was so much in the "Be Here Now" flow that it was difficult to pull back and provide daily reports on the action.
But I'm back in Vermont now (and really tired), but I very much want to start capturing the experience. I'll begin with Scott Watermasysk, who did a fantastic job hosting the event. He engaged everyone from beginning to end, making sure their ideas were being heard and that they were getting the kind of information they came for. That was my personal high of the event for sure, getting to spend time with ScottW.
Friday's all-day sessions at the Telligent Offices were great, of course, filled with inside information on where Community Server is heading. I reported on the sessions in Friday's Daily News. Following the Friday sessions, seven of us went to a wonderful Mexican restaurant very near the motel.
Saturday was even better. I was worried that the guys attending the summit wouldn't get a lot from the day since there wasn't a set agenda, but I was flat out wrong. Seven of us hit the iHop for a great breakfast. Connie, our waitress, kept saying how sweet we all were and how we made her day. Then it was a quick stop at the motel to grab laptops and head to the Starbucks up the road where we set up shop in a corner and talked exclusively about Community Server for the next couple of hours.
The Starbucks session was followed by some down time and an early dinner at a local barbeque establishment called Bone Daddy's. A bit more personal rest and relaxation followed, Notre Dame and Michigan State first-half action, and off to a nearby Cold Stone Creamery to wind up the day--arriving back in time to see the Irish come back from 16 to win.
Somehow the Gang of Seven got broken up into two party streams after Bone Daddy's (I think Eric Duncan's appearance at Bone Daddy's had something to do with it), and I have a feeling I am reporting on the more tame events that took place that evening. Still, I could not have had a better time, not just on Saturday but from the moment I arrived at the Telligent Offices on Wednesday afternoon through leaving DFW late Sunday morning.