Well, Just over a week ago I got back from attending my first BETT show, and I have to say it was an amazing experience.

It had everything, from hearing about 3 seconds and having a fleeting glance of Brian Cox, providing my “technical advice” to customers when I could, spending hours packing / handing out bags, many trips to storage to retrieve stock, meeting hundreds of enthusiastic customers eager to get our bags or stress balls, and clearly the best bit on the stand being when we had quite a few of the staff doing “Double Dream Hands” on Saturday (I mean, why wouldn’t we!!!).

Overall it had quite a familiar experience to when I previously worked as both a waiter and barman during my 6th form college & university years.  The at times very fast paced work, but also constant interaction with the general public is always something I’ve enjoyed and fed off (yep, call me a wierdo, but I enjoy running about at work every once in a while, and this was definitely one of those times). The atmosphere amongst the staff was also brilliant. Everyone pulled together and created a great atmosphere. This kept everyone going and kept everything working like a well oiled machine to try to give the customer everything they wanted, even when (most of the time) all of demonstration pods were busy, and our sales team couldn’t give any more demonstrations due to the constant influx of enthused new and existing customers.

As purely a developer it was also a great experience. Seeing how enthusiastic customers are to get their hands on our new product, and hearing how much they feel it’ll help in so many ways in their school, makes you enthused both as an individual, and as part of the team, to carry on producing the already great product we create to make a massive difference to the education of children.

Overall as I’ve already done on twitter I’d definitely like to thank both all the visitors to our stand, and all my colleagues, both those I finally properly met at the event, and those I’d already been working with, you all helped contribute to a thoroughly enjoyable working week.

Today was my last day working at my current employers. I’ve been there since May 2007 and had some enjoyable times with a group of people really worth working with, hopefully having made some good friends along the way. I’ve learnt a lot while here both with the corporate environment, being my first long-term employers, and a lot in terms of coding, having written everything from back end systems to the company’s web-sites.

After 5+ years though it was time to up-sticks and find myself a fresh challenge and it’s moving sub-counties in my beloved Yorkshire from South back to West. It was a hard decision to move on after so long, but I feel it’s the right one, and time for a change.

I start at my new employers in just over a week, giving me a nice relaxing week off in-between.

Here’s to the future, different challenges, and a load of new colleagues to get to know.