Thanks to everyone who made me so welcome at last weekend's LUGRadio Live - it's the UK's largest LINUX User Group get together with hundreds of enthusiastic geeks spending the weekend sharing their technical expertise.

There are some excellent write ups including...

  • a great description of what to expect courtesy of the excellent upcoming site which provides a place for communities (and individuals) to promote events
  • the LUGRadioLive blog which includes a great picture of the team of helpers who were the stars of the show for me. I have to say that the volunteers put on an event that would put many professional event management teams to shame. Admission only cost a fiver (that's £5 to those of you who may be unfamiliar with English slang!) and the sponsorship from commercial companies just added to the experience rather than taking over.
  • TD gave the most detailed write up I've seen which included an analysis of exactly what was included in the "bags of corporate tat" available for everyone who went.

I was delighted to be invited to join the "Mass Debate" together with Becky Hogge from the OpenRights Group, Chris Di Bona from Google and Nat Friedman from Novell.

As you can imagine I was grilled on matters including the following:

I really enjoy spending time with people who are passionate about technology and LUGRadioLive certainly provided an excellent opportunity to do so. Imagine my surprise when, having left the bar on Saturday evening and walked about 100 yards I heard "it's the Microsoft Guy!" - two LINUX enthusiasts came over to ask me more detailed technical questions!

Note: I have used the word "enthusiasts" in this post and certainly don't mean this in a negative way - I met some incredibly talented people at LUGRadioLive who were far more than just hobbyists.

I did accept a challenge whilst @ LUGRadio which I'll write about later this week...