A Big Conference Thank you

Now that things have settled down a bit from our annual conference and we are repacking our bags for the trip to Philadelphia, it is time to post up a big thank you to all of our members, speakers and exhibitors who attended and supported this year’s event. We hope you felt, like us, that it was the best one yet.
Firstly, our thanks go to the staff at the rather wonderful Westleigh Conference Centre and to the University of Central Lancashire’s network services people (thanks John!) who ensured that all of the access and facilities we required were met and exceeded; liaising with us for weeks before the event and helping to ensure that nothing was too much trouble.

Next to our speakers and their respective companies, who had all voluntarily given their time to come and address you on a whole myriad of subjects which this year really did cover a whole variety of subjects, both in the technical and policy spheres. So in no particular order let me thank:

• Rick Byers and CTI Group
• Jason Meers from One Planet Computing
• Tom Newton and SmoothWall
• Matt Eccles and Steve Burnard from Adobe
• Amber Williams from AEG
• The team from Lancaster University Network Services
• Garsham Roberson from Joskos, the Dell KACE team and especially Charlie Cochrane who bravely stood up with them and let us all know what it had done for his school

Also thanks to those companies who came to exhibit and help fund the event - even though space was getting tight!

• Adobe
• Net-Ctrl
• SmoothWall
• Lancaster University Networking Services
• Joskos/Dell
• ICT Direct
• Invictus/Zybert Computing
• Impero
• Siracom
• Schoolcomms

An an extra special mention goes to Shaun and Ric who both had to suffer a day working in the EduGeek office, finding out the only way you can fit three people in there is to sit on a wheelie chair in the corridor and wheel yourself in one at a time, and to Adobe who set us up with an instance of their Adobe Connect web conferencing system which allowed those of you around the world, who couldn’t physically be there, to make a contribution and see the action live online.

Finally but not least, thanks to those of you who took the time off work, travelling some rather large distances in some cases just to come and see us and each other. You really make these events more than a day at a conference… getting to meet, in the flesh, those who you speak to on a daily basis within the forums but are too far apart geographically to ever see in the real world.

All that remains is for me to say is that it really was a great day (albeit with a late start due to a technical hitch!) and hopefully we’ll be organising some events closer to home for some of you, so watch this space.

P.S. I think we’re going to need a bigger venue next year!!