TUG-ging along

By: François

Yesterday I attended a meeting of the Swiss TUG for the first time. Because of distance and language, this is not as trivial as it seems.

The Grossmünster church in Zurich

On December 6, the last meeting in 2007 of the Swiss TUG (TYPO3 User Group) took place, as usual in Zürich (which is not the capital of Switzerland, by the way). I had been wanting to attend such a meeting for a while, but this is no simple task because:

1. I live in Geneva, which is a 3-hour train ride away from Zürich;
2. the meeting takes place in German, whereas my mother tongue is French.

This means that it takes some organization. I need to spend the night in Zürich as I can't realistically go back home the same evening. Taking travel time into account attending a Swiss TUG meeting implies being away from home and office for at least a day and a half. Furthermore I have to concentrate quite a lot to understand what people say. My German is not too bad, but I sometimes have trouble following conversations, especially if the speaker's dialect (schwytzertütsch) is too strong.

Still it was well worth the trouble. Being the last meeting of the year it was a bit of a special event, with no conference but a visit of a data center in down-town Zurich, which was very interesting. Afterwards we had lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant. That was very enjoyable too and I was very happy to meet yet more TYPO3 enthusiasts.

I have been thinking of starting a TUG for Western Switzerland for a while, but I have never had time yet to set things up. It's not as simple as you might think. The organiser needs to find dates, meeting places, topics for discussions, reserve a restaurant, etc. A big thanks to Mario Rimann for doing that in Zurich and I hope to find the time and energy myself to start something at the other end of Switzerland.

In the meantime I hope you are happy with your own local TUG and supportive of your organiser.