ICEIS 2008

And so I'm back from ICEIS. I should be doing my work right now envisioning the planned release tomorrow (XWiki Watch 1.0 RC1 will be out these days) but I just thought to share some thoughts about the conference:
Very nice international experience, also national: met a lot of people from various countries working on very interesting projects, heard way too many accents my English receptor can take and also (re)met the people back home: Oana and Diana which I already knew and some other people from Bucharest and Cluj.


The value (in my personal system) of the papers presented varied from 2-3 to 9-10 (on a 0-10 scale). Too many threads (4-5 I think) and, at one point, badly distributed papers in the threads.


Pretty good keynote lectures, as much as I could follow, although some of them a little deviated from the announced topic...


VERY BAD WiFi: nice advertised Wireless and Wired internet connection but none of them working before 5-6 in the evening. The organizers blamed the scalability of the system (which was the hosting hotel's system) but I still think they should have tested it before and make sure everything works fine.


(Re)Met Alina and met Toni who helped us get around in Barcelona. Re-met Dennis and faught a lot on open source vs non-open source software, business and principles (I am so teasable, should fix that).
Met Carlo with whom we had a lot of fun (yet another example of how cultural barriers are no barriers at all).


Finally, visited Barcelona, on bad (unfortunately) weather and not so much time to do it. Nice town, modern in some places and old in others (fewer), always in construction. Very "party-town", kind of dirty, full of youngsters, people selling beer on the streets, bars full at 3 o'clock in the morning on the Ramblas. Food on that side of the world is good (pretty much fish so I cannot not like it) and pretty cheap compared to other places in the world (e.g. France or Italy).


Thanks to all the people who made this possible for me: Sabin for all the encouragement and support with the paper, the university for sending me in Erasmus exchange so that I'm closer to Barcelona, all the people that put up with my mess while working for all this and the guys that payed various taxes for me that I could not with my lousy stupid credit card: Marta and Ludo.


Now let the pictures speak (some more will come, once I get them from their owners):

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