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Taking place on the 26 – 27 November at the Park Regis Hotel in Birmingham, this landmark event celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of CELCAT Timetabler software and allowed delegates a peek at Timetabler 10, CELCAT’s new 5th generation cloud-based timetabling tool.

With delegates from the USA, France, South Africa, Australia and the UK joining some 30 members of CELCAT staff from the Sales and Marketing, French, Development, Testing, Technical Support, and IT teams, it’s the largest event that CELCAT has ever hosted.

The theme, ‘CELCAT Timetabler Future in the Cloud, Built on a Solid Past’, nicely highlighted two very specific reasons for the conference; to celebrate the 30th anniversary of CELCAT Timetabler software and to make key announcements regarding its future.

Tim Dix, CELCAT Account Manager, welcomed delegates before handing over to Adrian Gough, CELCAT Sales & Marketing manager, for the keynote address of the first morning which developed the conference theme and announced the launch of Timetabler Connect. The morning concluded by examining the challenges of switching from on-premise to cloud environments and how CELCAT’s consultancy services could assist with the transition.

After lunch, two streams of masterclasses were held focusing on new Timetabler 8 applications. The first stream included Student Absence Notifier (SAN), Plasma Interactive and Web Data Collector (WDC). The second stream called attention to the innovative work CELCAT consultants have been doing around System Integration Manager (SIM). The afternoon session concluded with a case study presentation from the Keele University Faculty of Health.

The drinks reception and Gala dinner allowed delegates and CELCAT staff to network in a more relaxed atmosphere. Many congratulations to the winners of the quiz, timetablers really do know some obscure stuff! The reward for their knowledge, and deftness with a key pad, was a bottle of champagne and some Amazon vouchers.

The second day was all about Timetabler Connect and Timetabler 10. Tim Dix and Craig Ewers kicked things off with the keynote presentation, ‘What You Need to Know About Timetabler Connect,’ which was followed by 3 workshops where delegates got hands on with Timetabler 10.

After lunch, two international presentations were delivered by the Los Angeles College of Music and Universite de Picardie Jules Verne respectively. Following this, CELCAT staff delivered a series of lightning talks discussing the CELCAT Reference Group (CRG), the new support portal and CELCAT’s new website. The concluding session saw delegates being invited to direct questions at a select panel of CELCAT staff.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank Nicholas Vaughan and Nigel Miller from the Keele University Faculty of Health for their case study presentation. We would also like to express our appreciation for the presentations from Stéphane Pouilett and Aurélien Boulet, from the Université de Picardie Jules Verne, and Thomas Aylesbury of the Los Angeles College of Music.

We know some of you were disappointed you couldn’t attend this year. Well, don’t worry. We’ll soon be making plans for next year, so start thinking about getting those applications ready to apply for the budget to attend. We promise that 2020 will be bigger and better, so keep watching this space!