PanamaJUG 2007 Speakers
The first PanamaJUG Congress may have been in a remote area and a small event by some standards, but it featured international speakers. Checkout the event map to see the speakers' names and locations. (Thanks to speaker Gerardo Núñez for creating the Google map of the event.) Oddly, the Google map puts it in the province of Colon, but it's really in Herrera. Although two speakers work in the Czech Republic, one is from Poland and the other from Mexico! The U.S. speakers all had a past connection to Panama and/or Venezuela.
Where is Chitré, Panama? Wikipedia mentions "internet access" as being one great feature of this small town, but we did find it difficult and slow to connect.
Why was the conference held there? Aristides Villarreal, the conference organizer, NetBeans DreamTeam member and PanamaJUG founder, is associated with two Panama universities there and it is the birthplace of the PanamaJUG. The pace is refreshingly slower than in big urban centers and the people are friendly and open. We always felt "en nuestra casa" (at home). Aristides, as well as Angel and Iris, two of the organizing team members, made sure we were taken care of at all times. I should mention the food was really good too. I couldn't get enough of the patacones (tostones for those from other Latin American countries).
