So it’s the morning (afternoon now!) after the night before of my first experience meeting people from the SBS Community
My head is still a little fuzzy so it’s taking quite a while to write this 🙂
All in all i had a fantastic time and learnt more in one night about the value of the community and the people that are a part of it than i have done online in the past two or three months
So what did i learn
- FeastIndia is a fantastic restaurant
- I really need to get Windows Mobile 6
- Drinking Port is a socially acceptable way to end an evening
- TravelLodge really need to get some air-con
- Nobody cares about your stupid stickers 🙂
- You can’t book into a hotel you don’t have a reservation for…no matter how loud you shout :-p
- I say really random things when i’ve had a drink
Not really…but first things first….
Thanks to Vijay for organising the whole thing (and Ratinder for putting up with us geeks!). The food was great and apart from one or two people getting stuck in traffic (you can’t control everything!) everything went very smoothly
I’d also like to say hello and thank you to Michael, David, Steve, Will, Susanne, Gareth, Jane, Alan and Paul for making the effort (some people came a long way!) and helping me have such an entertaining evening 🙂
Basically we all met up at the restaurant, ate, drank and talked loads, went to a bar in Leicester until they kicked us out where the remaining few went to the bar at the hotel where David was staying until we all realised that we really should end the night. Michael and i ended up in Subway watching some drunk guy arguing about why he should have a free sandwich, even though his voucher was about three years old!
So what did i really learn?
The insight into how other people do business, their opinions and ideas left my head full of tons of thoughts about stuff i can do to have a positive impact on the business
Also I got to put faces to some of those names that pop up everywhere, such as
Gareth Brown, who other than Vijay is PAL for the UK. After spending a couple of hours with him it’s easy to see how and why he got that status. He can also draw his business card faster than a western gun slinger :-p
Susanne Dansey, whose enthusiasm is there for everyone to see, has only been in her new job a month but from what we heard she is doing great things for Westcoast which will also benefit the community in general. Oh and has a great MVP badge!
David Overton, who is about to move away from the day-to-day of SBS to work with in the ISV team, but i very easily can see why he is so well respected in the community and why the community will miss his presence. His choice of shirt was fantastic!
I’m not going to mention every single person who was there but finally our other PAL Vijay did a great job of organising the night and i look forward to catching up with him again when the Midland group starts up in September which he is hard at work sorting out
I was really pleased with how welcoming everyone was and hopefully i didn’t say or do anything (too) embarrassing
This was my first in person visit to a community event but it certainly wont be the last. If you have never been and are a little unsure find your local group and make an appearance as i can certainly recommend it
Vijay posted some pictures he took on Facebook and Flickr. The flickr set is here
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