Lisbon in November. For Belgian people this is like heaven as the weather in Belgium isn’t great normally and some extra sun gives so much energy! The venue was the Meo Arena which is easily reachable by the Red Metro line and stop at the Oriente station. With an insane amount of 71.000 attendees you could expect lots of difficulties to navigate around the conference, but all in all that was acceptable. It was way better organised than the Microsoft Ignite conference in Atlanta I attended back in 2016 (23.000 attendees). 

There are plenty of toilets, places to refill your water bottle and an insane amount of food trucks. However, on the first day I bought an Americano coffee, which was small, and I paid 4,5 euro. Next days I bought a better and bigger coffee in the Metro station, including a Pastel de Nata, and I only paid 1,8 euro. My lunch on the first day, an average hot dog and french fries, was 14 euro. The days after I bought a delicious sandwich in the metro station for 3 euro.  At Lighthouse, we threat company money as if it was our own, so up to you what you do. 

Next to the prices, the queues during lunch time were quite impressive and I lost some time with that. On the second and third day, bringing my own lunch, I was way more flexible, could eat when hungry and didn’t loose time to queue for food. I could attend an extra session.