Back home after another amazing View conference. As a speaker, I tend not to really have an impression of the conference till its over. This time, at the Princes Sophia 5-star hotel in Barcelona (Amazing venue, dated rooms, terrible service, €10/beer, €30 for a bad club sandwich and two beers, expensive internet - avoid), I heard that once all the evaluations had been processed from all the fee paying delegates (its not cheap!), for the first time in history, the Admin side of the conference hit 100%, and the Dev side hit 96%. Possibly the highest scoring conference in the history of the View.

As usual, most of the fun (once I'd stopped worrying about my sessions) was talking to the delegates, hearing their issues with their environments, and sometimes being able to offer decent advice.

I even took an hour or so out to revise for and re-sit my Application Development Update to Notes 8 exam. Ouch. Failed it again, and even got a lower score than last time. As Warren pointed out, I'm likely to keep taking the exam till I hit zero points. Thinking of sitting this exam ? Well, the old 'Download Certx and give it a shot' approach doesnt work anymore. The exam *really* tests actual world experience. So build composite applications, install DB2 and test nsfdb2, and actually write code that does DXL export. Be scared. And if you have anyone who has actually passed this beast - hire em. I heard the fail rate on the Admin update exam was around 90%... Kudos to the guys who construct the exam...

After the conference, a bunch of us speakers with early thursday flights hit some restaurants (one of which spookily reminded us of the old Dolphin dining tent at Lotusphere!) and then onto the clubs. Specifically, Opium on the beach. So early were we we didnt notice the 2,000 people come in after us, and several football sized dance floors mysteriously appear from behind what we assumed were walls.. Nice venue! This let people like Chris Miller and Julian "Snake Hips" Rubichaux show their moves.. And you can sit on the terrace and watch folks skinnydipping at 3am in the sea.. Around 3am, it wasnt worth going to bed...