Dos Cervesas Por Favor

I am now back from two weeks of roaming around Europe with my Wife.  We are in love with both Amsterdam and the Costa del Sol.  I have never returned from a vacation more fired up to get back at it – which is a pretty good sign methinks. 

One funny thing was how the reception our dogs gave us when we walked in the door was so joyful (and we were so tired) that I forgot the suitcases outside the door all night – oops.

The first week of our jaunt was spent in the Netherlands speaking at the SDN conference (http://www.sdc.nl/).  I have spoken around the world in Australia, the UK and all over North America and I have never seen a more professional conference, nor have I ever felt more appreciated as a speaker by those organizing it.  This was also done almost completely with volunteers from the Dutch IT community.  Maybe they could make some extra revenue by consulting to others about how to do it right.  Thanks especially to Joop Precht and Maarten Van Stam for their help and especially to Peter Hamming for saving my ass when I couldn’t get my Macbook Pro to talk through VGA.  I am sorry that other names are not at hand but I hope they would know who they are when I say thanx to all of you.

My sessions included one on Best Practices for using Excel and two on Access 2010.  I will be letting out my content over the next while on here so keep tuned.  But suffice to say, the enthusiasm for Office was obvious amongst attendees who came to my sessions.  I got the distinct feeling that there are people out there interested in the capbilities Office provides overall, not just in the cool new stuff.  There is no doubt in my mind that more emphasis on Office Development, especially Excel and Access would be well recieved out there by many who actually have to suppress their enthusiasm for the technology to be taken seriously. 

As I told one session, it is possible we won’t have to avoid saying we are Access developers when people ask what we do for a living :-). 

Hopefully.

Dick