February 16, 2007 | Posted By : Liam Eagle at 4:46 PM PERMALINK | Blog Comments (0)

TheWHIR is Heading Back to Web Hosting Day

Plans were made and flights confirmed this week. The Web Host Industry Review will be sending a contingent to Germany for the Web Hosting Day event organized by Intergenia.

I was at last year's event with WHIR writer and video host Anastasia Tubanos (who will also be there again this year), and there were a few things that surprised me about Web Hosting Day.

There was the obvious - the event was held at a theme park near Cologne, Germany called Phantasialand (emphasis on the "Asia"), which was designed to resemble medieval China. I went on at some length about this in several items we published at the time, so I'll leave that be for now. Except to say that it is only on a truly surreal occasion that one finds one's self in a saloon in the old-west section of medieval China, which is actually a park in the German countryside. Also, you're jet lagged.

(I'll update this post later with a couple of pictures from the place. It's something.)

On to the relevant: The event itself, while considerably smaller than, say, ISPCON or HostingCon, is a remarkably well-organized affair. That is to say, I constantly found myself noticing, remarking even, how efficiently things were run. Perhaps this was the "German engineering" I've heard mentioned in car commercials.

An example: I try not to get too down on myself about it, but the truth is I don't speak German. And, of course, large parts of the event - which, as I mentioned, took place in Germany - were conducted in German. Organizers, however, provided wireless headsets through which attendees could listen to real-time translations in two language (one was English), exponentially improving my ability to understand what was going on.

There were other examples, but rather than carry on with that, I'll skip right to fulfilling my original intent, which was to let you know what to expect from us, coverage-wise.

I'll be covering the event, mostly through this very blog. Hopefully that will include words, pictures, inspired insights and various other must-read musings.

Anastasia will be producing some video content from the event, which we'll be getting up elsewhere on the site just ever so slightly less immediately - video editing requiring, as it does, a little bit of time.

Web Hosting Day is scheduled from March 26 to 28 (yes, I count three days too. I'd imagine the answer to your question is "because Web Hosting Day sounds better"), so check back regularly on those days, and we'll see how much translated information I can disseminate.