Others may have already mentioned it but this past week has seen a manifestation of coming together. I suppose that the main reason is the physical proximity of so many people at the Oracle User Group conference in Birmingham. The talks and demonstrations in the formal sessions are one thing but the social interactions are another, yet important part. The chance to re-meet old friends, the chance to physically meet people that seem to exist as some far-flung node on the Internet or email server, the chance to discuss ideas (no mater how stupid or off-the wall), and perhaps most important the chance to make new friends

Another manifestation is the people that pitched in to help Mark Rittman recover the bulk of his technical postings after his hosting provider had ‘a few problems with back up’ – a slight irony in that I spent part of my week preaching the need to design backup (and far more importantly RECOVERY) into a system and probably as the first part of the physical design. Thanks to all that helped Mark, the larger community is grateful too!