Lads and lassies, the room is filling up!

And while the counter is still going up, the getting-everything-ready-clock surely has started its countdown. A mild nervosity is getting us...

By the way: I'm not convinced that opening the doors earlier will lead to more or earlier registrations: I recognise a lot of late entries from hard-core returners that knew about coming over already in August or so (if not to say they decided last year). My guess: we're just in a last-minute-society. Organizing stuff like this naturally comes with this kind of suspense.

Those hard-core returners definitely show us that a large deal of the get-together-atmosphere really is about getting together, not about the topics or programme at hand. To me that sounds like a goal achieved. As steven mentions there is a large amount of new faces as well, hoping they enjoy the atmosphere as well.

Having access to the registration details I can offer some preview statistics. Don't ask for more: according to established routine the full details will be presented by Steven on the morning atfer the ribs!

• Largest delegation is not any more coming from Belgium (20). Q: Can you guess which country is taking the lead?
• Compared to last year there is at least a doubled count of people that take up intercontinental flights for this.
• 67 people have registered for the hackathon. Probably a large part of those will meet up here on sunday-evening.
• With 84 registered for the ribs I'm getting a tad worried about the image of our cocoon-community amongst vegetarians :-)