JAOO 2008, as was to be expected, was pretty great. It's hard to describe why, but it has a very unique feeling to it – it's different from any other conference I've been to. I met a lot of people I knew, or was happy to get to know, including Arjen Poutsma and Ian Robinson, Erik Meijer, Dan North, Michael Nygard Ola Bini, Erik Doernenburg, Michael Koziarski, Gregor Hohpe, Kevlin Henney, Rickard Öberg, of course the organizers, Kresten Krab Thorup, Aino Vonge Corry, and all of the other very nice Trifork folks.

Some of the most interesting things from my point of view: I attended Michael Nygard's absolutely great talks and had a chance to chat with him over dinner; I spent a while hacking together the very early stages of a REST DSL for Ramaze with Dan North; I exchanged ideas with Michael Koziarski about REST support in Rails 2.2, and I extracted a free copy of the ThoughtWorks Anthology from Erik Doernenburg. Talk about meeting interesting people :-)

All in all, probably Europe's coolest conference; highly recommended.