So EuroOSCON's just finished and I'm sitting in the foyer killing time before the flight back. There were some interesting talks here but I come to these things to meet people and that's been really interesting. Someone once said that the talks at conferences were a bit like the storyline in porn movies - you've got to have them but they're not why you watch - I couldn't have phrased it better.

Since I've been here I've been fortunate enough to talk with almost the whole O'Reilly team including Tim as well as Dion Almaer from Ajaxian.com, some of the Mozilla folks, the 'Ubertechnical Lead' at Google and several of the other usual suspects. It's a real privilege to get to run an idea past these people and incredibly useful to get their response to it.

What was the response? Well, without going into specifics, it was mostly good with a healthy dose of nonplussed and a couple of wows. Bit of a rollercoaster but on balance I'm pleased and it looks like a couple of things may well come out of this week - there's now some solid incentives to hit alpha by January.

Apologies for not having posted anything in weeks and thanks to those of you who've weathered the blackout. I had to move from London to Wales and then back again so for the last six weeks have been on dialup and have been checking mail standing up in the kitchen hence the reduction in online activity (and increase in productivity).

The only reason I'm back online now is that I'm at EuroOSCON in Amsterdam. It comes to something when it's easier to get connected by travelling to Europe than waiting for Tiscali to transfer an account (15 working days!).

The conference hasn't started proper yet and today is the tutorials on the day before. There seems to be about 150 people here at the moment but I guess there will be more tomorrow. If anyone reading this is here then please come and say hello.