I’m sat on the train heading back from what is likely the last ever New Adventures conference. As much as that makes me kinda sad to say that it might not happen again, it’s been a great few days and a truly great end to the first month of 2013.

New Adventures was one of the first conferences I attended when it ran for the first time back in 2011, I had been in the industry for about 15 months and hadn’t really found out much about the community around the web industry. I had attended FOWD2010 but that had been with the other developers at work and I hadn’t really met many people there, they were just people. New Adventures showed me there was a much bigger community around what we do and it made me want to be a part of it.

This year was no different. Except for me that instead of knowing almost no one, I knew a ridiculous amount of people, and met many more new folk as well. I think the extra events around the conference really help to promote this in the community and the Erskine bowling and the (abandoned) Fr00tball were some great opportunities to meet people and get to know the community.

The conference day itself was another fantastic success as well, I remember coming away from 2011 bursting with new ideas and things I wanted to do. This year is no different. The talks from Tiago Pedras and Jessica Hische gave me confidence that things I’m working on and the way I want to work are worthwhile and gave me the motivation to push on with them. Jason Santa Maria and Jon Tan’s talks make me think more about what I’m doing and how to approach new things. I remember seeing Jon’s talk from 2011 and being just as inspired.

Having Seb Lee-Delisle take the stage straight after lunch was a great decision, his enthusiasm and fun approach to his talks were brilliant to wake up the crowd after getting suitably full from lunch. I always enjoy watching Seb speak at events, I’ve seen him do similar talks 2 or 3 times in the last year or so and I’d happily watch him many times over.

Thanks to all the other speakers as well who did a great job, I don’t think I heard a single person say something bad about any of the talks with everyone taking away something different things from a variety of the talks. There’s few I really want to watch again especially Stephanie Troeth’s talk, when it’s up on Besquare, I really liked the idea behind the talk but need to hear it again as there was so much to take in!

Finally I just want to say thank you again to Simon and Greg and all those involved with the conference, thank you for the last few years hard work, I missed the second year which I wish I hadn’t but am so glad I made it back for the third! Thank you.