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My First Conference: SyncConf 2013

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SyncConf, Norwich’s first Agile & Tech conference, presented by SyncNorwich on Friday February 15th 2013 at the Open Venue was a huge success! We had 160 people come for the day and 42 for the dinner in the evening at The Library Restaurant. The success of SyncConf speaks for itself with the numbers, press conference and reviews:

Start-ups get boost from IT conference
Norwich digital conference puts region’s technology industry ‘on the map’
SyncConf; Norwich's First Tech Conference and Taggart's Debut.

Of course SyncConf wouldn’t have been a success at all without our speakers, sponsors, venues or delegates and my thanks go to you all. SyncConf also helped me realise a dream I’ve had for a while of having Kevlin Henney open a conference in Norwich. Kevlin has been a friend of mine for quite a while and huge influence on my professional career. Thanks Kevlin! Without John Fagan, SyncConf would have been a much smaller and less sexy Agile only conference. My thanks also go to John for doing such a fantastic job helping me organise SyncConf.

The photos from SyncConf, taken by Andrew and his team from Platform Ticket are already available here: http://www.syncnorwich.com/photos/13161312/.

We’re currently waiting on InfoQ for the videos and hope they will be available soon.

Slides can be found on slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/SyncConf/

If you enjoyed SyncConf and haven’t already done so, please support SyncNorwich by going along to the website and joining: http://www.syncnorwich.com

After slow ticket sales and a change of venue to reduce the cost, the speakers dinner was a huge success and enjoyed by the 41 people who attended. Even after a long day at the conference, the dinner guests were still going strong at 11pm. We’ve had good feedback from people who enjoyed moving from table to table to speak to different speakers between courses. SyncConf would like to extend a massive thank you to The Library restaurant and it’s staff for a great evening.  We’re planning to return to The Library for next year’s speakers dinner.

The date for next years SyncConf is Friday February 28th 2014 and is likely to be at the Open Venue once more. Tickets will be on sale later in the year. Watch out for emails and tweets.

SyncConf would not be possible without our sponsors. I would like to extend my thanks to each of them:

Basho
Aviva
Developer Focus
Pandr
Neo Technology
Ifftner
10gen
Skills Matter
bgo
InfoQ
Naked Element Ltd.
smart421

It’s been nearly a month since SyncConf and this is the first opportunity I’ve had to stop and write about it. I was expecting to have loads of free time once the conference was over, but it hasn’t worked out that way and I’m deep into organising a mobile development conference for July of this year.

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