Some notes from Rotterdam.

Suite75 organised a wonderful conference - the first of its kind, bringing together Groove developers from a wide spectrum. We've all met online, but for many this was the first real-world contact (I was surprised, for example, to find Suite75's CEO Machteld Wijnands not to be a besuited middleaged Dutchman at all!). Representatives from ten Groove Developer Partners: Suite75 themselves of course, Componentry (USA), Computact (India), Mysterian (Scotland), ParallelSpace (Canada), peer development (Germany), PopG (England), NPT (Switzerland), Symbiant Group (USA), and Virtual Methods (UK). Plus a couple of individuals in proto-partner stages. Most people in this group are actively building vertical solutions using the Groove platform. For some, Groove is the basis of their entire business.

For me personally, this was a "hard work" weekend. To some extent I had to fill the shoes of Steve Wilkinson (our VP Alliances) who needed to cancel his trip at the very last moment; Steve called in Saturday evening for a long conference call with the group, which helped of course. When this meeting was first organised, I was a Groove business partner, not a Groove employee; I know how the land lies on both sides of the fence. It's hard work to present the corporate viewpoint and strategy where, inside Groove, I'm a new kid on the block; where our new COO is proving to be a very effective strategic director (which of course means some change); and where I know some of the answers aren't easy. No, Groove Networks will not take your products to market (but we love to showcase cool applications). No, Groove Networks does not have many people in Europe at this stage. No, version 2.1 will not do (x) (y) (z). Here: our priorities are aimed to build the largest possible (horizontal) market for your efforts, by selling lots of Groove, to big companies and government. We think that this will make all our businesses incredibly successful. It may take a little time. But hey, let's look at Groove in these terms:

• Groove 1.0: cool, surprising, radical.
  
• Groove 1.3: very robust in a wide range of commercial environments.
  
• Groove 2.0: "8; DEPLOY" in InfoWorld.

After a very late night (sooo much to talk about!), another busy morning, coffee, more talking, some code- and pattern-sharing, more demos (the Groove/Autonomy connector triggered plenty of good discussion), some pizza, then I made my farewells and flew home exhausted.