The DDD South West team (Rob Bracken, Rachel Clements, Martyn Fewtrell, Chris Myhill, Ross Scott and myself) have reached a tough decision that there will not be a DDD South West in 2013. We are taking a break. We don't know how long the break will be yet - one year, two years, more ? but we plan to review the process regularly. The reasons will be fairly obvious to anyone who has been to DDD South West ? it is a whole ton of work and we need a break. Martyn Fewtrell, Chris Myhill, Ross Scott and myself have done DDD South West four years in a row and despite the team being a good size to distribute responsibilities it is still a considerable undertaking and the bottom line is that sometimes there have to be things in life other than organising conferences.

I also want to be clear though: we enjoyed it. It was a whole bunch of fun. It was very exciting and it was very rewarding. Personally I am very gratified that the South West .NET community is alive and well and the events inspired people to step up and take a step towards something new. I would particularly like to thank all of the speakers who gave their time for free and came along armed with great enthusiasm and inspired developers to try new technologies. I would also like to thank the army of community people who so consistently over the last four events walked up to me and said so simply "how can I help?". I would also like to thank all of our sponsors who made the difference between the events happening and the events not happening; as I always say "free means that someone else pays". And I would like to thank my co-organisers who have attended so many Harvester meetings and endured so many emails and have been so patient with me.

Go community!