Here's my (rather long) diary of the World Tour, London with #hq on Sunday 14th June 2009. I would have submitted it sooner, but I first tried to submit it to HQ as a blog. Given that they have posted a blog of their own since then and my submission is still pending, I'll assume the system implements silent rejection where I am not notified. Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this journal of the event from an outsider's perspective.

Until the day before, I wasn't bothered about the Tour at all. Just some lucky-ass staff with some free time to go on holiday, I thought. So I wasn't watching the group. But I checked my messages on Saturday and just happened to see the word London in the World Tour sidebar box, and had a look. The event was going down in Hyde Park, South Kensington, which is right next to the Royal Albert Hall and Imperial College London, where I graduated last year. I knew the route like the back of my hand and I wasn't that far away, so I paced up and down, and came to the conclusion that I should have a crack at it. I found the dA t-shirt I won two years ago and headed out the next day.

When I got to Hyde Park and got to the Albert Memorial, I found at least 60 people gathered around under some nearby trees. "Great," I thought, "they're all nerds who are allergic to sunlight!" But fair play - it was rather hot in the heat of midday. Found there were, unsurprisingly, a largely student-aged demographic. Many people were sensible enough to label themselves up (as had I) but $mccann was there with a roll of dA labels for people to use. Also, every hat, including top hats and wizard hats, were labelled 'hat'.

I searched around for any familiar usernames as I've never met a deviant face-to-face before. I wasn't having much luck... and then two came along at once. `maxwell-heza, who was scouting for *britain members at the meet, recognised my name. She was the one who featured deviantTIDY - what a coincidence! Also present was =Pyritie, whose username I always misspell as pyrite, understandably!

I also introduced myself to $mccann, $Heidi, with whom I have spoken before, and of course $spyed, whom I'll now refer to as Awesome Angelo. More about him later!

I also got caught by ^Synfull of Icons and Emoticons, who just recently featured one of my old emotes! Crazy! Also with her was uber-cool `brokenboulevard, and a Fella. So already, I'd met up with five times as many people as I thought I would.

Soon enough, it was time for the big speech from Angelo. By then, we were at least 250-strong - incomparable with the other meet photos I have seen. We got introduced to all the other staff who had turned up, including $pachunka and $randomduck, and all the gallery moderators too. By then, the cameras were set up for the photo-shoot, and as already mentioned, the shear number of people there made it pretty tough to get everyone in shot, even with quite a convex lens!

Next, we split up into groups for Literature, Digital Art, Photography and... I believe a separate Cosplay group was also formed with a spare notice board. We went off to Digital, since that's the closest category to emotes, really.

Quote: "Where's your undo NOW?!" - =Pyritie, taunting at the Traditional group from a safe distance.

He also brought along a DS, with which us three emotists made an emote... Mine was rubbish.

Then we sat, ate and talked some more, eventually going in search of Angelo and his promised previews of upcoming new features. More on those in an up-coming journal! It was very impressive, as we'd all hoped. After that, a few of the keenest of us hung around a got a few more demos from $mccann on his laptop. Again, more on this later, but for people hoping for certain features in the upcoming weeks and months, I don't think anyone's going to be left disappointed. More like astonished.

We then got into deep and complex discussion with $randomduck, $pachunka and =Winterflood about asynchronous message delivery systems (remember the days when dA had to go offline to deliver Hot Topics?), database indexing, various bugs old and new, and also about different cuts of wheat and the way in which they are used.

We were all so lucky; the whole thing was outside, and we were of course in England, so if it had rained, I fear it would have been a wash-out - quite literally! However, it was clear and beautiful all day.

Much time passed, and many lols were had. It was about 18:00 now and ^Synfull and `brokenboulevard went on their way, and the 30 people who remained grouped up and contemplated eating and drinking. Now for another fun task: get a group of about 30 people to stay together and take a journey on the Underground network, and all off again at the other end! I always laugh at the state of our dated, clunky tube network. Lo and behold, the Circle line train we were on had difficulty shutting its doors. We used our initiative and also some blank stare stress balls and favourite stickers to lead the way.

So after making it from South Kensington to Baker Street, the Met bar was conveniently placed just outside the station exit. Good location. And most importantly, picked because it was large enough to accommodate us all. We ate and drank, and =Pyritie was (politely) kicked out at 21:10 for being under 18. Le sigh. A couple of others whose names I forget, @dxd and $pachunka and I discussed briefly how one should define art, but being intelligent people, quickly got bored with that one because, of course, that opinion varies from person to person.

Several users were banned from dA for messing with Angelo's fish and chips while he was distracted.

I gave $pachunka (Simon) the chance to geek out in the restaurant. You know the Collections system? He helped make that. Wow, is there so much to talk about when it comes to coding! While there, he made the Message Center save delay shorter, which I think has already propagated to the live site (awesome) and I saw the eccentric exception cases surrounding the mysterious pi-like pageview counts of $chris. The rest of those discussions are top secret!

Simon's an extremely friendly and enthusiastic guy, and I could have stayed there talking for virtually the whole night, but I had to make my way home (it was 23:30) so I thanked him and the others for a great meet and left to get home for 01:00, with 6 hours to sleep before work. But hey, you only live once.

I want to round this journal off with a quick word about the dev team and notably $spyed. deviantART is a huge place with so many dAramas and rumours spreading all over the place, and I've seen a lot of insults and slanderous comments thrown in the direction of staff. Things can get out of control on the Internet. But really, you have to meet these people in person, and when you do, you'll find that they're all very nice people.

Angelo is not the kind of dev-smiting, money-whoring suit that the old farts make him out to be. He's the most enthusiastic person of all when it comes to the future of deviantART, and the absolutely unique experience and community it has. He hasn't gone and pissed people's subscription money up the wall by travelling across the globe either - this has been very carefully planned and it's really changed a lot of people's lives for the better to unite on such a large scale. By no means is he ignorant, dismissive or above everyone else either. He spent at least half an hour answering questions at the preview, including minor site suggestions. When we were at the bar, I thought it was fair enough that he was sitting at tables across the room with the other admins - there wasn't enough space for all of us in the corner where we'd taken the long table. But noooooo... They all came back and slipped in amongst us. We're all one and the same...

So he might be the hardest person on the site to contact, but he's a real nice guy. Don't you forget that!

This really has made my year. Thanks for reading, and hope to see you all again soon!