Looking back at The European Conferences...
EurOmnis was created in 1999 by Fred Brinkman and Nick Harris as a forum for Omnis developers from all over the world, especially Europeans, to learn and develop new ideas and techniques, share experiences, collaborate and meet face to face, and discover the latest developments in the Omnis world in a collegial and friendly environment.
It was the follow-up of a highly successful conference put together by Bruno Huyssen in 1998, a conference now known as 'The Woodstock' of all Omnis Conferences.
Past attendees of EurOmnis all agree that the key ingredients for a good conference are the use of a facility that is exclusively admissible to Omnis developers, is appropriately sized to the conference, a venue with no distractions from the technical sessions, longer, more in depth sessions that are held in the mornings, afternoons and evenings, and the provision of an all inclusive formula so there is no reason to leave the facility for the entire length of the conference.
In March 2002 this successful conference format was brought to London, Ontario, in Canada by David Ferri, Cliford Illkay and Fred Haislmaier under the AmerOmnis Banner. Again one year later the EurOmnis format was ported to Australia, OzOmnis was born.
In 2003 Gavin Foster took over as joint organizer of EurOmnis as Fred Brinkman retired from the role due to other obligations, in 2007 the latter returned as conference organizer, deploying the 'EurOmnis, The Next Generation'-concept, abandoning the 'class'-format and introducing smaller and more intimate sessions, giving attendees a possibility to choose topics of interest and put together their own conference. EurOmnis, The Next Generation presents attendees with opportunities to get the information they want or solve the problems they have. Omnis conferences have never been a place to solve problems but a place to listen to people doing presentations. EurOmnis, The Next Generation, changes that.