My God you are still reading even after a title like that, well let me explain further.

After you have been a tech for 5 to 10 years, you start to realise that is is not quite enough, yes you have experience, yes you have seen it all and know the root of many technologies so the new stuff that comes out is mearly variations that don’t take long to learn, but you are starting to look a bit long in the tooth to the upstarts graduates, there are lots of ways of dealing with this, from the odious PM to Manager route (Spits!), to the serious tech head (time to grow a beard that you can keep squirrels in), I chose the architect route, now that means I have to be bloody good at a certain line of business as well as the tech that supports it.

I chose Insurance, it’s not the most glamours or the highest paying ( good Insurance business knowledge adds £100 – £150 to your daily rate vs the £200 – £300 for investment banking) but it is far less stressful and I have found the people to be very friendly (something that matters to me)

But even insurance has its levels, from the simple hi-lo (high volume – low value) types such a car and personal liability which fit on one sheet on paper to the very serious “International Property” and “International Marine” (Blue water) which take days or even weeks to do one policy with the help of serious computing power, at the top end of these complicated polices is the joy of Reinsurance which is basically a way of split a large risk amongst lots of companies.

From an IT point of view its hard to get a business grip on this and see it as the brokers and underwriters do even if you deal with the tech side of it every day, and lets face it, its not something you just chat about in the average pub, but there is a book on it to help, well there are quite a few books on it but many of them are out of date. this one however is considered one of the best AND has just been updated

Its Called Reinsurance: the Nuts & Bolts written by Keith Riley and I have to say it’s bloody brilliant, I don’t just mean on its coverage of a complex subject or on the fact the author has produced a technical book on insurance that does not have you slitting your wrists ever 5 mins, I mean that every couple of pages I had a “oh so that’s why the data looks like that”, it gives real insight in a friendly manner and helps you distinguish yourself for other Techs when it comes to dealing with the business. Format wise it feels very much like a “for dummies” book back when such books addressed tricky subjects. Very definitely well worth the investment

Sometimes with both large clients and multiple small clients, you are though no fault of your own faced with tons of simultaneous jobs at once, all of which are somehow the most important thing since the big bang, containing clients and managers both trying to see who can scream the loudest with you in the middle having to decide which one of the multiple tasks that all have to be done simultaneously you are actually going to do first.

If you tell anyone that someone else’s item is more important than theirs they tend to have a melt down, so the way I have personally found to deal with at least some of it, is a simple important/not important decision,

Important Problems

1. Ones that cost or make money for a client.
2. Ones that affect a client’s reputation with the wider world.
3. Ones that would mean a state of compliance or none compliance with a legal or government office.

Unimportant Problems

1. Everything else.

Amazingly I have not found manager at a large client that has ever taken me to task for taking a decision on this basis of this logic, so I can recommend it if you are in a pinch and don’t know which way to turn 🙂

OK, better late than never, but here is the report form this years UKICON a awesome fun affair which may be the last of its kind, now that IBM are apparently pulling back on the sponsorship of such (a truly insane plan if you want my option), even knowing that everyone was fired up and I got good audience participation which makes it worthwhile.

Now this was my first conference were IBM Connections was the main order of the day, I was luckily enough to be able to present with Gab see Here for her blog entry (for me it was like being allowed to present with GOD!!)

Mine and gabs slide decks are below

Now this year I got nominated for an IBM champion (the fact that it was accepted just shows that someone at IBM has a very sick sense of humour), but I suspect the naming of my solo presentation is not going to help that cause much (ah well)

everything at the conference was organised perfectly, and for me it was all a swirl of groovy people, cool tech, panicky presentations and vodka, a most excellent time.

As always a great thank you to Warren and Kitty (not to mention the rest of the helpers over the years)

Well my first Blug is over and I have to say I am very impressed, Theo Heselmans is a genius and the fact that there was actual IBM backing, both in terms of people and in terms of money made a real difference, apparently Blug is now the largest lotus user group in the world.

The feel was very professional as well as relaxed, I made more contacts and had more serious conversations then even at Connect 2013 and shock of shock there were even times when I exchanged business cards with people when both of us REALLY wanted to rather than it being one sided or for politesses sake.

Both the food and drink for the event were amazing and seemed to be none time based (at Connect and other conferences its always “how much can we get down out throats within the time limit”)

The venue was awesome, the Faculty Club in Leuven

for some reason I have yet to grasp I did not take any pictures of the bleeding inside (face palm)

The first proper day of blug started with a apparently amazing keynote where notes 9 would be released, I say amazing because I was skulking in the speaker room as all my clients had noticed I was busy and so were having melt downs but even here Blug did us proud as the network was nice and fast even when Notes 9 was released and 200+ people pounded the hell out of the network.

I did have time in between sessions, client needs and hard core social interaction to not only have squint at the freebie bag, which unbelievably had some things in it I wanted to keep (this has not happened since the last Ilug) but also kept the bag its self (a note to all conference organisers, unless you are giving us a brand name back pack that’s better than our current one a book bag is the way to go as we can use it later),

The session I did with Martin Vereecken, Mark Leusink and Matt White went down very well with it filling the room

All credit to the amazing slide deck goes to Martin!

Talking of sessions all the content I saw was brill, absolutely no fillers or restrictions, which produced many near perfect sessions.

Lastly the town of Leuven was spellbinding

You will note that [Matt White](https://twitter.com/mattwhite) and I skulked out of the conference to go fetch the gift of chocolate that is required of everybody who visits Belgium, by the end of the conference EVERYBODY had done this task.

Lessons other IBM conferences should learn

– Having a steady but not extreme flow of wine and beer in the sponsor area makes people come to it all the time and makes them more relaxed so they talk to the sponsors, no need to over do it so they get pissed but just grease the conversation wheels
– Sugar and caffeine on hand at all times give people energy and makes the more enthusiastic
– Allow ALL forms of content and presentation just make sure the quality is high.

So my first Blug begins, travelling up in a full car with both Matt White and Jullian Woodwood, with thanks to the kindly Tim Clark from TC Soft Consulting for driving us all that way (and letting me kip on his floor).

This conference is a rare thing, a well run conference organised by Theo Heselmans who seems to be a master at the art as well as of getting money out of sponsors, as a speaker I am being treated amazingly, and the venue is jaw dropping, more on that next entry.

First night was the speaker dinner, in which nice food and amazing beer was served. but my main enjoyment was the company, packed with the smartest of the IBM community, I learnt more and made more contacts there than I have done in the last year put together, this included:

• The new wrappers for the IBM Domino java interfaces , which IBM should have done ages ago but is awesome that the community has taken it on.
• The discovery from Mikkel Flindt Heisterberg at http://lekkimworld.com/ that the problem with log4j that I simply could not fix in domino CAN’T be fixed (god I feel better knowing that)
• Tons of what other people are up to from marketing to breaking into new markets.

additional fun was provided by the caricature painter, who managed to make me look better on paper than I have ever done so in real life.

One final thing, the night before the trip was as normal devoted to building the LDC freebies, so if you want one come pester either Matt White, Jullian Woodwood or me

catch you tomorrow