J! and Beyond is the first international event for Joomla! addicts. 187 people from 25 countries across 5 continents have gathered in Wiesbaden to live and breathe Joomla! for 72 hours (and add some).
As I'm finally here, it's almost surreal. I've «met» a lot of the attendees before - but only virtually. To meet these people in real life is a really nice experience. It's like coming home, really. It's like coming to a place you've never been before, yet the people there are like your neighbours. It's a very nice feeling indeed.
Last night, I met Rafael from Dioscouri, Joe leBlanc, Brian Teeman, Fotis Evangelou from JoomlaWorks, Nicholas Dionysopoulos, Thoma Kahl and Sören Eberhardt-Biermann from Virtuemart, Chris Davenport from the documentations team, Yannick Gaultier and Victor Drover from Anything Digital (sh404SEF) and a lot of other people from the community. We had some beers at a place in downtown - oh, the German beer is nice!
It's one thing chatting with people online, but it's when you meet face to face that you teally see the person behind the name. And, I think I need to change my profile picture. Everyone was telling me I looked very different in person. I'll take that as a positive :)
Now I have just registered and try to figure out who everyone is :)
I will report back to you all throughout the conference, so stay tuned for more.