Once again, I was visiting the Joomla!days Netherlands this year, which started on friday 15 april with a Pizza, Bugs & Fun (PBF of #pbfnl). When I arrived they were busy with fixing the WiFi signal but soon after that the hotel delivered a nice big switch and lots of UTP cabes so everyone could connect to the internet. Personally, I felt quite at home because it brings back memories of the LAN-parties I visited in the past.
As usual the PBF was ending with a pizza in a restaurant, meeting again some new people. After the pizza we all went to the bar in the hotel for some coffee (or two), tea or perhaps something stronger. Here we spend the rest of the evening and like almost every year, some attendees did bring their instruments. And when towards the end of the evening they were jamming away. Some Joomlers did go to bed early and some didn't from the stories I heard later.
And like the year(s) before there was also a Performance run planned, not only on sunday but also on saturday (and luckely at 07.30 and not 07.00). On saturday we had a group of five people present (Roland, Ryan, Dennis, Joris and myself) and we did a short lap, about 2,66km around the hotel. After the run it was taking a shower, having breakfast and heading towards the first keynote.
On the saturday, besides the keynotes, I enjoyed these presentations:
- Build quick websites (advanced)
- Google Search Console (average)
- Complex pages user friendly (advanced)
- Chronoforms: an example (average)
- Custom Fields (developer)
Of course there was a fine lunch and after the sessions a short drink in the bar. The diner was, as always, a fine 3 course diner. Annemiek and Bianca reserved a seat for me at their table so I ended up between Søren and Henk. Before the first course Brian, who was also at the same table, was translating the menu for Eli into English and, suprisingly to me, got it almost all correct. I couldn't translate parelhoen (guinea fowl) into English but the rest was close or correct.
We ended the evening in the bar, as usual. I joined a table where Elisa was sitting with Elisa, Niels, Robert, Francisco, Eli and Mike and the evening went by very quickly. So I went a little bit later than planned to bed but wanted a full bottle of water next to the bed, so I went up again and met Ryan at the coffee machine and I asked him about his marathon in Rome the weekend before. It was 02 in the morning when I finally got into bed, did a tweet about it ons saying just that and getting up early for the morning run at 07.30.
At the start of the first keynote quickly I went to get a cup of coffee (really needed it) and when I entered the room I was told my nightly tweet was used in the intro of the day. And to ease my hamstring I decided to stand in the back of the room instead of sitting and that really helped a lot. I didn't have a problem sunday.
The presentations I enjoyed on sunday:
- Who, what and where in Joomla 4
- Joomla Best Practices
- Component Creator tips and tricks
- Discussion JUG's
I really needed coffee again at the end of the day so I skipped the last presentation. During my personal coffee break I bumped into Eli and he told me he used my in his closing keynote. So I had to think wether this was going to be problematic because of the night before... But at the end he onlly used a photo of me talking to Anne, so it could've been worse.
The sunday was now also at the end, there was a final drink in the bar and I used it to share some thoughts about a development/new version of a website. So after that is was going home and absolutely break down on the couch. This year, like the years before, was again superb. So much looking forward to #jd17nl!