Last week I went to ABUG-4 , this was my first ABUG ever. As I’m a long time Atlassian user, it was long overdue but I finally made it.
I really liked the venue. I was a bit amazed by the number of people that showed up. 73 according to Stijn’s tweet.
The content was also good. As the company I work for is also an Atlassian partner, I didn’t see many new things regarding the stack. However there were a couple of interesting sessions by customers who explained how they used the tools in their day to day business. e.g. the guy from http://www.onyxonlinelearning.com/nl/home made a very nice presentation on how Confluence is really at the heart of their business. It’s nice to see all kinds of businesses are finding the openness of the Atlassian tool suite a good fit for being one of the cornerstones of their business. I for one use Confluence, Jira and GreenHopper pretty much every day (multiple times an hour). Off course the products are not a silver bullet (as nothing ever is), so I’m still skeptic about a lot of things.
After the venture we went to the bar of the hotel next door. We were there with almost all the Atlassian Experts from Belgium. The least you can say it was an interesting session with some heavy discussions but in the end I think it was very fruitful discussion.