Having formally started inviting individual speakers for the ITJC last week we have been absolutely amazed at the response. What seemed as one of the major challenges for us upfront, has really turned out to be a nice surprise! The response has been fantastic and our speaker slots are filling up quickly, with presentations on enterprise frameworks, IDEs and tools. The speaker list will be posted up on the conference site once we start getting the topics and speaker bios finalized, at which point the marketing machine will really kick in from an attendees perspective.

Luan O’Carroll and I went out to the Cineworld Cinemas last night during the Microsoft Silverlight presentation, to take a look at the facilities from a conference standpoint, and it has really been a fantastic experience. The venue is great and I just know that we are going to put on a great event there. Nothing helps to get things in perspective like a 400 seat auditorium with cup holders on every seat The venue is outstanding in that we can upgrade our facilities as the days require, switching cinemas to handle the popularity of each presentation.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself. What seemed like a pie in the sky project for the Dublin JUG a couple of months back when we started talking about it, is really coming in to fruition – thanks in no small part to the IrishDev.com guys who have been great at every step in the process, working tirelessly to get the logistics of the operation in place.

To quote a famous beer ad. “This is gonna be great!”

Paul Graham has written an interesting essay where he proposes that classical philosophy has failed in its purpose because of its approach. Rather than playing mental word games hoping to come to general truths, a la Aristotle, we should start with small truths and and make them more general. Best of all anyone can do it and no one needs to know that you are a philosopher

I just stepped down as organizer of the Dublin JUG on meetup.com, thereby setting it on a path to automatic deletion. It has been a great trip, and I hope that the JUG will continue to receive the same sort of support as we move to our new home at dubjug.org

I’m feeling kind of nostalgic, but nothing has really changed other than moving to a platform where we have more control of our own destiny. Long live the Dublin JUG!

Now all we need is someone who will make our new Drupal site pretty