First day at IDUG – Presentations, Prize Winners & Puddings!

It’s great to be back at IDUG this year, it started with all the buzz and vibrancy I experiencend last year in Vienna and it’s great to see the familiar faces again.

The day began with a great joint keynote by Curt Cortner and Namik Hrle of IBM. They discussed interesting topics on NoSQL (NotOnlySQL according to Curt!), temporal stuff, cloud computing, and multiple tenancy. They shared IBM’s view on converting traditional systems landscape into one system using a column oriented data store model.

As usual, Matt Huras did an excellent job with his DB2 presentations on pureScale. He went through the new enhancements in Fixpak 4 including DR with pureScale and in another presentation went through a pureScale primer for DBAs which was very useful.

The evening saw a reception to mark the launch of the exhibition – it was great to mingle with the crowd and meet new people.

The DB2 Geek quiz went very well culminating in the Triton drinks reception in the evening. The winner of the first IPAD draw was Lutz Becker of Gothaer Systems. And Sebastian Zok of ITGAIN Consulting who braved the bitter cold to complete the second stage of quiz completing all questions correctly and earn himself a well-deserved IPAD – well done Sebastian!

Phil Carrington of Holiday Extras tried his best to complete a tray of rice-puddings, but had to give up after an impressive 5 helpings! Great reception.

Don’t forget, although the top prize has been won there are still some great DB2 Geek prizes on offer – so Seek the Geek!

Here are a few pics!