I’m sitting on a plane heading to Seattle on my way back from the PowerShell Summit EU (on my way to the Chef Summit in Seattle).

I can only say that I was completely blown away by the attendees of the conference.  This conference drew people from all over Europe (and a handful of folks from North America).  

I have been led to expect European audiences to be less willing to engage speakers with questions/comments.  One of the things that really makes the PowerShell Summit concept work is when the attendees ask questions and help drive the discussion.  It keeps us as presenters honest and makes sure we cover things that are valuable to the attendees.  I was pleasantly surprised to find the attendees of this event were more than willing to engage the speakers and it made for some great sessions.

The other misconception I had was that it was hard to break people out of their cultural groups.  The DSC Hackathon on Monday night proved that wrong.  There were four or five workspaces with different tasks at each station.  People formed groups regardless of native language or country of origin.  We were all PowerShell hackers, their to learn and experiment.

The final thing I want to note about my experience there was also in relation to the Hackathon.  Very few people in attendance have every done anything with Desired State Configuration.  For many, my 45 minute talk earlier in the day was the most time they had spent learning about it.  Despite this, almost everyone came out for the Hackathon and dove right into the challenge.  And, almost more importantly, we ended up with a handful of DSC resources (or at least good starts) that I’ll be reviewing and adding to the community repository.  To tackle a new technology and then be willing to publicly share that code takes a lot of guts.

I’m proud to have been a part of this event and even prouder of my community.