Last evening I went back to the hotel room – the first night of the conference – and was on email and calls all night – no surprises there! But on the second night I decided to finish work at 7:30pm and join the conference festivities. This was a good call!

There was a conference sit-down dinner – not that usual at a conference – certainly not at a US conference – more a European thing. Wonderful food. Superb wine. Great service. Very nice live music – a 3 piece ensemble. At dinner I sat at a table where I knew no one – and of course in a few minutes the connections were made. I sat with some folks from AI – a new records management ISV for SharePoint – with many of the folks who were originally in Meridio (that was sold to Autonomy – and as you may know Autonomy was sold to HP very recently). A very nice setting to relax and to get to know new people. Lots of praise for the conference organizing team on the week thus far.

At dinner there were two announcements:

• The 2012 European SharePoint conference will be the first week of December (3 weeks after the world wide SharePoint conference) and a vote was taken on 3 options – Paris, Barcelona or Copenhagen.
• The 2012 European SharePoint Community Awards was announced – with entries now open in 4 categories
• Most innovative SharePoint cloud Solution
• Best SharePoint Intranet Solution
• Best SharePoint Public Website
• Best SharePoint Social Strategy

Then of course to the bar! Only to be social of course! Lots more fun. Lots of great discussions about all sorts of topics – including but not limited to SharePoint! I left very late and the party was still in full swing. Where do people get the energy!? A new beer also – “Berlin Weiss mit grun” – I will let you look that one up yourself!