June 18th, just after the demise of the Dutch soccer team, I gave a seminar at TDWI-EU in Munich. I think me, Jos van Dongen and Frank Buytendijk where the only Dutch guys (speakers as well as attendee) at a succesful conference with over 700 attendees.
I had a blast and was impressed by the seminars given by Jos van Dongen, Barry Devlin and Mike Ferguson. I learned a hell of a lot and had great laughs with these guys as well.
To top things of I had some vegan food in Munich with a bunch of Pentaho folks that almost convinced me to join an even darker side (instead of SAS....lol). If you guys are reading this; thx for a great evening and showing us some architecture in Munich.
Oh and please - there is no correlation between Pentaho and vegan food. How a meat-loving guy like me ends up in a vegan restaurant deserves a separate blogpost. Suffice it to say that Barry Devlin was to be blamed ;-). The food was great though!
The seminar regarding Agile Data Warehousing had something like 50 attendees I think. Which is pretty ok, considering my competition as well as considering the fact that Data Vault is not very known (yet) in Germany. I had some great questions, especially from the guys/gallls who 'know' and have 'been in the trenches'. Lots of recognition and good questions and discussions were asked after the session and the days that followed.
It amazed me that large companies in Germany experimented already with Data Vault and data warehouse automation or were familiar with it and wanted to start a pilot. Beside the Scandinavian countries, Holland and Belgium; I think Germany will soon join and contribute to the community, which would be great.