Last week I was in London for NDC-London. And it was a great week.

I saw some great sessions and I met some amazing people.

The sessions

The opening keynote by Dan North about mastery and not craftsmanship hit the nail on the head for me. But then I never believed in the craftsman religion in the first place.

I saw elasticsearch in action and I know I have to try that out. I saw Vagrant in action and I have to try that out. I saw Nancy in action and I have to try… oh wait. I saw the kinect in action and was not amazed. I saw simple web in action and will stick with Nancy for now, sorry Mark and Ian. I saw fakes in action and know I definitly don’t want to use that. I saw scala in action and… meh. I saw how to test angularjs and know I don’t do webdev enough to ever put it in practice. I saw octopus deploy in action and will hold of for now. I saw zeromq and know I don’t need that for now. And I saw how RX worked.

What it comes down too is that I learned and discovered.

The people

I also met nice and passionate people. The crazy and the less crazy. The social and the less social. The weird and the strange. But all of them there because they care about this profession and about what they do.

A special thanks to the team that made this possible and to my boss for letting me go.

Also to Damian Hickey (@randompunter), Jonathan Channon (@jchannon), Ian Battersby (@cranialstrain), Paul Stack (@stack72), surlydev (@surlydev), Alistair Smith (@alastairs), Matt Ellis (@citizenmatt), Glenn Block (@gblock), Adam Ralph (@adamralph), Maarten Balliauw (@maartenballiauw), Jan Vandenbussche (@janvandebussch), Rachel Hawley (@rachelhawley) and Hermit Dave (@hermitdave). Most of whom I saw for the first time after years on twitter. And I’m sure I missed a few.

And a special mention to Hadi Hariri who was missed by everyone.