ESUG 2009 wrap up – Best Ever?

All the participants should now have safely returned home after a hugely successful ESUG conference. Participants from around the world (including an Argentinian football team) shrugged off the economic climate to spend a week in Brest and share their experiences and aspirations with fellow Smalltalkers.

Highlights included:

• Presentations from a range of speakers from industry and research backgrounds, including  Cloudfork, DeltaStreams, WebVelocity.
• Tutorials for Seaside, Aida, SqueakNOS, and many, many, more.
• The Innovation Technology Awards, awarded to Retrobjects which is a great C64 emulator, PhidgetLab which uses eToys to interact with real world objects, SqueakNOS: a lightning-fast bootable Squeak image, and Glamour which is a flexible engine for scripting Smalltalk browsers.
• Updates on various Smalltalk platforms:  VisualWorks, VA Smalltalk, Object Studio, Gemstone and Pharo.
• And lots of great opportunities to network and socialise, including the inaugural ESUG Blind Date!

Check out the photos for a flavour of the conference: Adriaan, Hernan, James, Yuri. and many more.

Comments on the web have been very positive too:

• “ESUG was a blast, totally.”
• “Definitely the best Smalltalk conference I’ve ever been to.”
• “a great conference”
• “a pleasure to attend every year”
• “fascinating, inspiring and enjoyable”
• “it’s been intense”

With reviews like that, next year’s conference in Barcelona is bound to be a sell-out, so remember to book early!

(Photo from Yuri’s collection)