The 2014 F# Tour in numbers

31 Dec 2014

Well, we are in the last hours of 2014, and I am nearly recovered from the craziness that was the F# Europa Tour 2014, so here we go – the Tour, in cold, hard facts (after all, I am a numbers’ guy):

• 40 days of travelling across Europe.
• 16 talks.
• 5 workshops (about 50 hours total).
• 9 countries.
• 6991 miles (11,250 kilometers) travelled, roughly (this is straight-line city to city, so the actual number is probably a good deal larger).
• 14 hours of bus.
• roughly 50 hours of train.
• roughly 28 hours of plane.
• 12 cities visited (and spoken at!).
• I lost track of how many gallons of beer were ingested. This is big data.
• 500 attendees? Maybe more? See previous data point.
• Delivered hundreds of shiny fsharp.org stickers to F# Communities across Europe. Btw, in case you didn’t hear - the F# Software Foundation is now a full-fledged, legally established entity, and YOU can be a member. Check it out!

Now for the important qualitative questions:

• Where did I eat the best bacon? This came as a surprise to me, but I have to say, the bacon I ate in Dublin, Ireland was amazing. Twice.
• Where does one find the best beer in Europe? This is a hard one – I had a chance to sample great beers from all over the place. I would say, Munich and its Biergarten rules, but the live beers at BuildStuff in Vilnius, Lithuania, were a very nice surprise.
• What’s the weirdest thing I ate? This one goes to Norway and its Lutefisk, a traditional Christmas fish dish. It’s definitely a regional specialty, as in, a specialty which didn’t expand beyond a limited regional area, for good reasons. For the record, I actually enjoyed it!
• What was the worst travelling mistake? Booking a last minute train ticket from Paris to Aarhus, Denmark, to realize in the train that instead of a nice sleeping car, I would be spending 22 hours sitting in a train with no food on board.
• Biggest scare: every person who has given a talk will tell you, relying on the internet and anything live in a presentation is a rookie mistake. This is great advice, which is why I completely ignored it. It all worked just fine, but learning that Azure had been down for a couple of hours, right before a talk at BuildStuff which 100% required a live deployment to Azure to work, did give me some cold sweat. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat! It was a bit crazy, and definitely exhausting, but a ton of fun. All of you who helped out making this happen, from the bottom of my heart, thank you! The F# Community is absolutely fantastic, packed with energy and a good, friendly vibe, and everywhere I went felt like family. You all kept me going, so again, thank you (you know who you are)! In the meanwhile, I wish you all a happy year 2015 ahead, let’s make that one even better than 2014, and I hope to see many of you again this year! And, as always, feel free to ping me on Twitter as @brandewinder.

Obviously, the F# Europe tour has arrived in Munich. Prost! #fsharp pic.twitter.com/vP3VG6n8Of

— Mathias Brandewinder (@brandewinder) November 11, 2014

... and the F# tour is now in Vilnius! Live beer, grand time & awesome people. #buildstufflt #fsharp pic.twitter.com/kIJBhQNOwP

— Mathias Brandewinder (@brandewinder) November 19, 2014

In case you wondered, @sforkmann is not ALWAYS working on @paket. Here he is helping @altnetberlin #fsharp dojo pic.twitter.com/BcW8JnP7mM

— Mathias Brandewinder (@brandewinder) November 26, 2014

Nice crowd for @nnugbergen F# #machinelearning hands-on, VS, emacs, vim, XS & monodevelop in the house! #fsharp pic.twitter.com/fu0SkkSnZV

— Mathias Brandewinder (@brandewinder) December 10, 2014