This year, having passed a year since the acquisition of Novell by Attachmate and its subsequent instantiation as a standalone division, as well as being its 20th anniversary, SUSE had its first user group meeting. All in all, the portents were good, and SUSE got its core messages across to an audience of about 500 of its users as well as a cadre of the more sophisticated (IMHO) industry analysts.

What a keynote! Starting with the President and General Manager of SUSE talking about the explosive growth of SUSE over the last several years followed by Dirk Hohndel, Intel's (inhale a breath) "Chief Linux And Open Source Technologist" (what a title!) comments about being part of the open source "ecosystem" from the start to what turned out to be my favorite, Doug Balog, General Manager of IBM's System z!

The whole time SUSE was welcoming in the best way possible. The venue, the environment, the people. Very nice to see people from different companies and countries.

SUSECon had an exhibition area where partners and SUSE showed their products. SUSE demonstrated their solutions and anybody could go to them and ask the simplest things to the most complex information.

Access to all the subject matter experts was priceless. All presenters were more than willing to listen and provide feedback on any question asked. Many presenters even provided personal contact information. This reinforces SUSE's commitment to adapting so customers can exceed. Much appreciated.

Attending the first ever SUSECon was a time well spent as it gave me an opportunity to meet with the nameless faces behind SUSE development. This is probably the most valuable experience that cannot be replaced by emails, tweets, or other virtual meetings.

Overall, this was the best tech conference I have been to. I did learn a good amount, and the choice of venue was fantastic. With the pampering we guests are receiving, it feels more like a vacation than a conference. I will definitely recommend my co-workers attend next year.

SUSECon was a marvelous event. Very familiar and energetic atmosphere, and we felt much of the pioneer spirit from 20 years ago.

I learned that SUSE is a cohesive team that is ready to help and willing to do so. This is more important than any of the technical info I received. I also made many contacts and feel comfortable emailing when necessary.

Most valuable was the direct access to SUSE engineers. On the technical part, it was very interesting to be able to get an overview on different technologies.

The technical sessions were very good and informative, especially relating to new technologies (btrfs, SUSE Manager, SLE-HA).

There were many valuable things—the great technical information, the contact to the SUSE team and partners, the time to exchange ideas and thoughts with fellow professionals.

Opening Keynote was full of positive energy and set the tone for the whole conference.

I got to see several vendors that I got interested in, also I learned about a few possibilities that we could use to leverage SUSE to reduce our IT costs.

I learned something new every single day, which I hope to recreate and implement at work for the primary motivation of the sysadmin—self sustaining systems!