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SoCraTes UK 2025 trip report

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In May 2025 I attended my third SoCraTes UK conference . SoCraTes events are run as an Unconference, where the sessions are planned out on the day that they happen. sessions can be run by anyone attending, so there's no divide between speakers and attendees. Everyone is an attendee, and everyone is a speaker. In previous years, there has been a training day, but that didn't happen this year. This was a shame, but it was still an amazing conference. It takes place at Milton Hill House in rural Oxfordshire, and we all gathered there on Thursday evening. One thing I love about the conference is that it still takes covid seriously, and everyone gets daily covid tests and masks. This year, one of the attendees immediately tested positive for covid, and isolated. So we were all spared a dose of covid! I tend to suffer pretty badly from covid, so I am very pleased with this policy.  Once we'd all done our covid tests, we gathered for an introduction session. As usual, the event w...
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SoCraTes UK 2024 trip report

In September 2024 I attended my second SoCraTes conference, and once again, it was enlightening and fun. There are two formal parts to the conference - a training day, and then two days for the unconference. I say formal parts, because there are plenty of informal sessions as well. One of the great things about SoCrcaTes is that we all stay at the same hotel, so there is loads of opportunities for social interaction. You meet people at breakfast, you maybe go for a walk with other people, there are board games and music sessions in the evenings... It's a strange mixture of really intense and very relaxing! There's a lovely Italian Garden at the hotel, which is a very nice place to sit and chat: SoCraTes has a pretty strong XP focus, but there are plenty of non-technical discussions and workshops too.  The day before This year, the conference was at Milton House Hotel just outside Didcot in Oxfordshire. So on the day before the conference, I took the train from Edinburgh to Lon...
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