Got there, eventually. It was not easy to make it up to be there, but it was definitely worth the hustle :)
Yesterday was the first of two evening meetups which are part of the ApacheCon 2009, with two main tracks to geeky-chat with some smart guys on Portals or Maven quirks. I’m still working on ubiquity[1], so I attended at Maven meetup only, which was actually really cool and interesting.
It featured Carlos Sanchez as its host and speaker, with a first presentation on EclipseIAM (AKA q4e).
Then Gabriele Columbro had the chance to talk about his work on both Alfresco archetypes and CALM Application Lifecycle Management, even if it was not really a planned as a “full featured presentation”, so no slides, bells or whistles, just something more meetup-style ;)
Talks time was closed by Wendy Smoak, who gave an overview of the Maven Release plugin and, well, claimed and swore it actually works[2] :)
After that, we couldn’t stay sat and quiet anymore, so we all gathered around and started to talk each other of various stuff, having the chance to actually meet in person some of the names you see recurring in mailing lists and fulfilling our duties as meetup folks.
It eventually ended up in beer[3], having some fun with the aforementioned Carlos Sanchez and Gabriele Columbro, Jucca Zitting and Thorsten Scherler around the very center of Amsterdam.
It was cool, smart, geek and there were beers!
[1] no, not the FF plugin :P
[2] today it’s Release Day(TM) for my team, so once again let’s hope Wendy will be proven to be right. Cannot uncross my fingers, anyway…
[3] it always does, thanks God(TM)