> And some more pictures here:
>
> http://www.tunantes.com/galeria/prague_2005?page=1

Cool :-)

> Some relevant notes about the conference this year (no special order):
>
> ) Much more people
> There where almost 50% more people this year. It's good to see that the
> Conference atracts more people, but the best thing to notice is that we
> are not loosing the "soul" of the first conference in Fulda: people
> actually know each other, and we still continue to discuss firebird at
> the hotel bar, at dinner, and so on.

Ah yes ... we even managed to talk about other stuff than Firebird every
now and then ...

> ) Martjin t-shirts
> Still the best. (yes, I did google for it!)

Hahaha, well, there's a story :-D

> ) The missing persons
> Helen and Nickolay miss this one and Yemanov's once again was unable to
> be present.
> Sean, Vinkenoog, Claudio, Adriano, so many others that we really like to
> meet...
> [
> Helen moving around with her special coffee on her hands, Nickolay's
> saying "yes, but..." every second, are just a few examples of
> traditions that we can not live without in a Firebird Conference. :-)
> ]
> (Dmitry: 3 times is the maximum allowed!)
> But, the important to be noticed, it's that we really notice the missing
> ones, and we tryed to make them present as much as possible.
>
> ) Russia & Brazil
> It was really great to have people from russia and brazil in the
> conference. This two countries have for sure the biggest number of
> firebird users, and it's really nice to see them in the conference.
> A small note also to Japan - for the first time also!
> Ho!, did I mention South Africa? :-)

It isn't called the WorldWide Firebird Conference for nothing!

> ) Speakers
> We did had very interesting sessions this year.
> And some happy surprises: it was really amazing to see Flame Robin in
> action in a session about events. :-)
>
> ) Beer & Talks
> People use to laugh about the beer and the hotel bar. But I can assure
> you that the hotel bar is the only place where you can notice that a big
> South Africa company is using firebird servers to equipment-control and
> data colecting, that at least two big japan companies are using firebird
> internally and on there products, that you can now buy a Firebird
> t-shirt in russia, or even that there are some chickens in a small farm
> France that are still free even with the new law against bird-flue, and,
> finnaly, you learn how much fun you can have if you buy a unimog (well,
> some people will learn what is a unimog...).

Is your brother, I believe, interested now? :-)

> ) Beer & Tips
> If you need to change collation in real time, just update system tables
> with the new collation, and rebuild the indexes.
> That's an example of a tip you can get drinking beer with Mr. System
> Tables and a coke with Mr. Optimizer....

Ahum... Let me add that this tip is "unsupported" in any way though!

> Now join all this with a city like Prague....

Excellent times!

--
Martijn