The 2015 Geekmoot was held in Ghent, Belgium on 20-22 March. It was hosted at the lovely hotel Monasterium PoortAckere, a peaceful place near to the town centre. The hotel used to be a monastery and it has a very calming atmosphere.

Around 20 people attended, from different countries. Many were from The Netherlands and there were citizens of France, Belgium, Portugal, Norway, England, Germany and even as far away as Canada and the USA. The attendees were web developers (like myself), module developers and development team members.

Throughout the 3 days, the main content of the Geekmoot was a series of presentations given by attendees. Many of the presentations were very valuable and I learned a lot from them.

Some of the more notable presentations were:

- The keynote from Robert Campbell (user calguy1000 on the forum). He outlined the status of CMSMS 2.0 and gave a good developer's view of the whole CMSMS project.

- Web developer Eric Pesser gave an interesting account of how he had produced a powerful module to connect to a real-estate system, which he uses for a number of his clients.

- Morten Poulsen (Silmarillion) gave a presentation about a couple of his modules, an Ajax chat system and NeoBackup, and admin area database backup system which sounds like it might be useful for me.

- Fernando Morgado (Jo Morg) gave a useful lesson in Smarty - something that is important for a CMSMS website developer to be proficient in.

- Anne-Mieke Bovelett (compufairy) led an interesting non-techy discussion about sales and customers and told us all we don't charge enough....which is probably true!

- I was honoured to be asked to be a part of a panel for a question and answer session, which was interesting and enjoyable.

- Manuel (manuel) gave a detailed look at how to create a multilingual site, something that a lot of developers have to deal with.

- Kevin Danezis (bess) gave a very interesting talk on the new version of the Forge (module repository system). He has done a lot of great work on this and he gave a demo of the new system which is looking very smart and will be a fantastic addition to the CMSMS system.

- Finally Robert Campbell returned to give a detailed run through of CMSMS 2.0 - including installation, a look at the changes and a demo of the easy upgrade process. I have played with 2.0 but had forgotten how good some of the new features are! By the way, Robert announced the launch date for 2.0 will be within "60 days", that takes us to around 22 May. So now is a great time to get involved in the almost-complete beta process and post any issues you find in the forum.

The presentations were interspersed with lots of coffee, snacks and lovely lunches served downstairs. In the evenings we all got together and walked into Ghent city centre (5 minutes walk) and admired the beautiful architecture nestling between the waterways, some of the buildings date from the 1700s! Manuel kindly showed us around and found us some great restaurants and bars. And in the mornings we met for breakfast and compared hangovers!

One of the most valuable things I got from the Geekmoot was meeting and chatting to fellow developers and learning from them. Web development can be a lonely profession and it is lovely to get to know fellow geeks. And it is useful to realise that some of your own issues and problems are shared - it's not just you who suffers! And it is great to meet people in the real world who you know in the virtual world (forum), and to shake the hand and thank those that work so hard for the project.

Thanks to all those who made Geekmoot 2015 happen. Particular thanks go to Manuel who did much of the organising because Ghent is his home town. Thank you Manuel for everything, including the cool mugs, the funky lanyards and for showing us around your beautiful city.

If you missed out on Geekmoot 2015, try to come along to the next one. I guarantee it is worth it!

Ghent at night:
https://twitter.com/maidbloke/status/578647104857468928

Keynote presentation:
https://twitter.com/maidbloke/status/578836537938456576

Mug!:
https://twitter.com/maidbloke/status/578859103377866752

Beer time:
https://twitter.com/maidbloke/status/579318680745558016

Until next time!

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CMS Made Simple Geekmoots attended:
Nottingham, UK 2012 | Ghent, Belgium 2015 | Leicester, UK 2016

Thx for the nice review Paul, I'm very happy that you enjoyed it!

Greetings,
Manuel

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Hi Paul,

What a nice review, and I cant agree more... It is nice to meet all of you fellow geeks in person Some for the first time and some for the x-th time, but all nice and enjoyable people.

Hope to see you all again in the near future in whatever place that may be...

Ronny

Hi Paul! Hi all!

I also wants to thank again everybody for what was my first GeekMoot.

I don't know where the next will find place (sunny Portugal ? ) but I hope I would come again.

Highly valuable experience for me.

I can send my slides or be available for questions about my presentations as you now got my email.

See you or read you soon!

Eric

Uff, only 20 people

Too bad. With such interesting topics I'd expected significantly more participants.

Hi!
Is there a way to see or read the different keynotes?
That would be awesome even if it would be a paid access.

jd

All presentations are video recorded. Plans are to make them available but it will take some time to finalize.

@Paul Thanks for the review.
Indeed!
Well you never know, right?
Well, there might be a few reasons that explain that, but all things considered, for us (and afaik for the participants) it was a win/win situation:

• - everybody learned with everybody else;
• - we all shared knowledge and new ways to unleash the power of CMSMS;
• - new ideas were born;
• - the community became stronger;
• - CMSMS becomes better because of it;

So, it's not so much about the quantity of the attendees, but more about the quality.

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Thank you all who were present, for a great time and a wonderful experience, and know that it was a great privilege to meet you all and share knowledge.
Thanks.

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@JoMorg Amen. it was a great experience that I hope everybody enjoyed and learned from.

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