Going to a conference means at first: you have to travel.

These RoadTo-moments are very important.
I really love to read all the tweets from all the people I’m going to meet soon.
The hashtag at this time was: #RoadToUnconf.

My way didn’t took much time – but nevertheless it’s been a hard journey. The train was totally overbooked. And this is, what I can say about travelling in an overbooked train:

• if you accept a call you have to shout LOUD to make sure the one at the other end can hear you FOR CERTAIN
• you’re going to miss ANY call ANY time, if your ringer volume is’nt FULL volume.
• if your child is playing a video game make sure that the blimblim sounds are LOUD
• if you’re listening to music, you don’t need headphones and at best you can loudly sing along.
• if you’re going to eat something, you don’t have to close your mouth.

But anyway —-

This was my first MageUnconference in Utrecht. The dutch Magento Unconference is organized by Dutchento. And this is my short checklist of this event:

Location:
A DREAM. Fort aan the Klop. I like the venue. I like the name. Nothing more to say. I don’t know what happens there if it’s raining, but it seems that the organizers are eating up everything every day of the year or they have a special sun dance. The location lives from sunny days and there was a lot of sun.

Food:
My favorite meal is bread with herb butter – and BBQ. So I’ve been happy with everything…

Talks and discussions:
What I like at UNconferences: it’s not predictable. You cannot force any session. In the best case you hear something new and you take something home that is important for you.

I did.

I noticed a lot.

Therefore a successfull event means to me:

• great (& new) people
• great & new knowledge
• great food
• great weather
• great location

But it’s not only new knowledge. What happens to my nearly only at conferences and hackathons: I understand that I’m not the only one in the audience who doesn’t know everything. The speakers – okay, they are „the knowers“ – but the listeners, they are the not-knowers and I’m just like the others not knowers.

But anyway —-

From a knower to a not knower. What you need to know about the Netherlands:

• if you start eating Stroopwafels you’ll never stop
• kip doesn’t mean „sleeping“
• if you don’t know what „friends“ are, you can ask and get some
• bakeries are hard to find, but if you find one, you’ll not willing to leave

But anyway —-

The Unconference started on friday evening. With a „hello“ and wine, fire and beer.

Next day the topics were collected, everyone had two votes and every topic with enough votes got a place on the schedule wall.

After a great day with talks, discussions and workshops and sun and sitting on the grass a professional BBQ master mastered kip, fish and burgerthings.

Guido collected the woman on site to record a podcast about woman in tech. And – for reasons – I have to mention that Claudia is not only a freelancer, she’s the organizer of the hackathons in germany, she’s part of the Firegento e.V. board and she’s organzing the Magento meetup in Leipzig.

This podcast session was very exciting – even or because of the wine I drank before…

In the meantime… someone puts a table on the grass and someone puts some poker chips and cards on the table, another great moment at this weekend.

I’m going to be there again. Maybe I learn another dutch sentence since then.
Thanks for all, I had a really great summer-session-food-faces-time.