What happened at Geekmas

A big "Thank You" to everyone who came along to Geekmas over the weekend - a good time, a great night at the hotel, and a fantastic curry had by all!

Code quality, testing and maintainability turned out to be a major theme that ran through the weekend - with topics ranging from Rasmus Lerdorf's 4 layer PHP model through the doctest module in Python - and that's a pretty wide range.

The scheme for a campaigning web site (Neuroblastoma) that I posted up here yesterday was something that we worked out on the tail end of Sunday, and I wish Dan all the best with his work on that site.

Even with Melksham loosing all its useful trains in a couple of weeks, a half of the people who stayed overnight actually arrived by rail. Alas, the train turned into a bus (again) for their Sunday return journey... and in two weeks time there won't even be a daytime Sunday bus to Chippenham and Swindon

People travelled from the South Coast, from the Netherlands, and from London and Harrogate to attend (and that is NOT intended to be a complete list!). We were also delighted to welcome the partner of one of the originators of HTML, who worked alongside Tim Berners-Lee at Cern. A really interesting insight into the life and times around then; and I'm not name-dropping to respect privacy.

We've intentionally got cycle and motor cycle space, under cover, at Well House Manor and indeed we welcomed one of our delegates as our first cycling guest. He happened to be collapsible (you know what I mean!) but I'm cheerfully saying "yes, that's a sensible provision" to myself.

Do we do Geekmas again next year? Yes - we probably do, although there are elements of it that are starting to happen year and weekend round... technical people in at other weekends, and all that sort of thing.

In fact, Bruce and Lika have invited us all to come down to New Milton (I think he said tents in the garden as he doesn't have a hotel like us ;-)) and I understand that Lika makes an excellent Lamb Shaslik. Just don't tell my friends on the left!
(written 2006-11-28, updated 2013-02-23)

Associated topics are indexed under

G102 - Well House Consultants - Things to do in Melksham
  [3531] Blowing our trumpet about Melksham - (2011-11-28)
  [3284] What to do in the evening during a Tcl course - (2011-05-10)
  [3239] TrainWest, 2011 in pictures - Christie Miller, Bowerhill, Melksham - (2011-04-09)
  [3230] Whaddon - near us and yet so remote from us - (2011-04-03)
  [3229] Coincidence, or naturally repeating event? - (2011-04-03)
  [3062] Melksham Carnival - getting ready for 2011 - (2010-11-20)
  [2716] Melksham in Pictures - (2010-04-10)
  [2656] Melksham Carnival - (2010-02-28)
  [2175] Melksham in pictures - (2009-05-11)
  [2141] Town Crier competiton - (2009-04-25)
  [1928] Melksham Oak Community School, Melksham, Wiltshire - (2008-12-07)
  [1894] Shopping in Melksham - (2008-11-19)
  [1452] Santa on the train to Melksham - (2007-12-01)
  [1330] While waiting for Melksham Post Office - (2007-09-02)
  [989] Melksham Quiz - (2006-12-15)
  [977] Melksham and Norwich - (2006-12-10)
  [957] Improving the historic town of Melksham - (2006-11-30)
  [929] Presenting Melksham - for a weekend away in Wiltshire - (2006-11-17)
  [829] Where to go within 30 minutes of Melksham - (2006-08-11)
  [670] Architectural Heritage - Devizes - (2006-04-04)
  [524] Santa comes to Melksham - (2005-12-11)
  [500] Bowerhill, Melksham, 2006 Calendar - (2005-11-19)
  [488] Looking for railway groups and users - Swindon, Salisbury, Southampton - (2005-11-06)
  [354] Ballooning from Bath - (2005-06-21)
  [344] Walk in Bath - (2005-06-11)
  [342] The evening after the course - (2005-06-09)
  [329] the Stately Homes of England - (2005-05-29)
  [325] Gone Racing - Larkhill, Wiltshire - (2005-05-26)
  [312] Maud Heath - (2005-05-15)
  [305] Within about an hour - (2005-05-08)
  [298] Sharing pictures of Wiltshire - (2005-05-02)
  [266] A beautiful place to live and learn - (2005-04-04)
  [51] Gym and swimming - Melksham Blue Pool - (2004-09-16)
  [5] Driving in the UK for new arrivals from the USA - (2004-08-07)

M300 - Well House Manor - Behind the scenes
  [3961] Well House Staff Party - (2012-12-22)
  [3844] Rooms ready for guests - each time, every time, thanks to good system design - (2012-08-20)
  [3743] Sunday - no longer a day of rest - (2012-05-28)
  [3093] How many toilet rolls - hotel inventory and useage - (2010-12-18)
  [2961] Initial handling of phone calls and walk in visitors - (2010-09-19)
  [2960] The Well House team - September 2010 - (2010-09-19)
  [2916] Testing the robustness of our hotel and training systems - holiday and sickness times - (2010-08-11)
  [2910] Robust - testing the system - (2010-08-09)
  [2396] Easing off in our 50s? - (2009-09-06)
  [2247] A day in the life of a hotelier - (2009-06-18)
  [2125] We have lost a regular business guest - (2009-04-10)
  [1991] Rules for a King - (2009-01-13)
  [1973] Required Request - (2009-01-03)
  [1957] Why are cooks bad tempered? - (2008-12-22)
  [1948] Blame Culture - (2008-12-17)
  [1904] Ruby, Perl, Linux, MySQL - some training notes - (2008-11-23)
  [1900] Table Topics - (2008-11-22)
  [1854] Three Seasonal Pictures - (2008-10-25)
  [1637] Providing exceptional service - and carrying on doing so. - (2008-05-09)
  [1571] Await guests in the early hours - (2008-03-12)
  [1520] Terms and Conditions - Hotel, England - plain English - (2008-01-26)
  [1515] Keeping staff up to date on hotel room status - (2008-01-22)
  [1490] Software to record day to day events and keep an action list - (2007-12-31)
  [1441] On cancellations, rebooking, and pricing schemes - (2007-11-22)
  [1371] Hotel in Melksham at Christmas - (2007-09-29)
  [1369] One business, four different angles! - (2007-09-28)
  [1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
  [1311] What do people look for on a hotel web site? - (2007-08-20)
  [1285] In the army, or in civvie street? - (2007-07-31)
  [1189] Meet, greet and welcome - (2007-05-16)
  [1179] Sizing sheets and other domestic issues - (2007-05-07)
  [1159] It can take more that one plus one to get two. - (2007-04-22)
  [1105] A week is a long time in the life of a conference centre - (2007-03-10)
  [1083] Behind the scenes - (2007-02-17)
  [1000] One Thousand Posts and still going strong - (2006-12-18)
  [939] Swipe cards for hotel rooms - Security issues - (2006-11-23)
  [931] Before and After - Well House Manor - (2006-11-18)
  [927] Hotel door furniture - (2006-11-15)
  [897] Too much for the National Trust - (2006-10-18)
  [868] Smoking, or no - (2006-09-16)
  [813] Monday Morning at Well House Consultants Melksham - (2006-07-24)
  [769] King Edward VII - days of empire - (2006-06-20)
  [742] A visit from the solicitor - (2006-06-03)
  [677] Sympathetic development - (2006-04-09)
  [203] Holes in on line information - (2005-02-05)

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Python collections - mutable and imutable
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Coming from London to Melksham by train for a course
What happened at Geekmas
Python and the Magic Roundabout
Sludge off the mountain, and Python and PHP
Running an on line campaign
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Look around this mouth.