Whenever you are tempted to say something controversial, you can relativize your statement a bit like "Personally, I think that ...", "From my point of view.. ", or even better "It can be argued that...". You do that to prevent steering up dust. Well, for the following statements I won't need such things: The Common Lisp Workshop was a huge success. Success in terms of people attending the workshop. Success in terms of people hacking Common Lisp. Success in terms of progress parts of the audience made despite the task I have chosen was way to big for a one hour workshop. Actually I should say 3 1/2 hour workshop. I talked for twice the time I planned for and was surprised that both parties involved sustained this: First, that I am able to concentrate for such a long time on talking sense about non-trivial ideas, second that the audience apparently was able to listen to me. I hope to repeat this workshop somewhere sometime (if you are interested